In January, pianist Roland Paolucci brought a quartet of musicians, including a few former students, to Akron’s downtown jazz nightclub Blu Jazz+.
Anyone adroit or lucky enough to witness Mr. Paolucci’s periodic small band and solo piano appearances at Blu and other places was witnessing nearly a half-century of the Akron jazz scene coming full circle.
“He planted a seed 40 years ago that has grown into this great music tree, the branches of which are very, very far reaching and I’m just one branch of that tree,” trumpeter and former Paolucci student Jack Schantz said.
Mr. Paolucci, 78, a beloved longtime educator who founded the University of Akron’s jazz program, died Monday evening from acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Schantz was a talented 18-year-old in 1974 when he joined Mr. Paolucci’s Akron Jazz Workshop. Schantz, along with several other workshop alums, would not only follow Mr. Paolucci to the UA jazz program, but Schantz even followed Mr. Paolucci as its director, and as artistic director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.
Mr. Paolucci came from a very musical family. His father, Robert, who had a steady gig in the CBS orchestra in New York City, was considered one of the greatest concert trombonists in the world during his career and Roland, who had perfect pitch and began playing piano at age 5, soaked up the music and lessons.
Following an on-the-job head injury, Robert packed up his wife and baby boy and moved to Akron, opening Tersini’s music store (eventually Lentine’s) where his son hung out, listened and learned from his horn-playing cousin Eddie. The teenager began playing around town with bands, including as upright bassist for virtuosic pianist and eventual employer, mentor and friend Pat Pace’s combo in the mid-1950s.
During his 20s, Roland and his first wife, Mary, had three children — Anna, Ilya and Eric — and Mr. Paolucci picked up cameras, working as a photographer and a cinematographer at WAKR and WUAB while still playing gigs on the side.
In the mid-1970s he took over the Akron Jazz Workshop, a nascent loose conglomeration of local jazz cats of varying ages and skills who gathered to play tunes. Mr. Paolucci took the lead and gave the group a musical direction. He taught the band not just to play through the black dots on the page, but also to learn the inner workings and details of a given piece and to understand it, in an effort to make the music jump off the page and into players’ and listeners’ ears.
When Mr. Paolucci got the job of directing the UA’s lab band, he wound up establishing and building the university’s now-respected jazz program, and many of the Workshop musicians immediately became students to follow their leader.
“Roland got into education almost by default. His family’s background, his years performing with Pat Pace, he had a lot to offer,” trombonist and current Cleveland Jazz Orchestra director Paul Ferguson said.
Ferguson met Mr. Paolucci in 1978 as a member of the Workshop, then transitioned into a student in the budding UA jazz program and performed in the CJO under Mr. Paolucci’s direction. Mr. Paolucci served at the CJO from 1986 to 1993, earning the orchestra its national reputation while playing behind legends such as Sarah Vaughn and Tony Bennett.
“He was a great educator, and they say ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach.’ That’s not true. Roland was an outstanding jazz pianist, he was great arranger, and he had wonderful musical taste, and he could communicate that to students. And I’m one of the lucky ones who got to enjoy a friendship with him for 38 years,” Ferguson said.
Mr. Paolucci’s widow, Marci, an actress and curator of the Harris Family Gallery at Weathervane Playhouse, said her husband was “the kindest, most gentle, loving man I have ever known,” and relished his students’ successes.
“My husband cared deeply about his students and did everything to encourage them to develop their talent and he must have done a really great job, because look at where so many of them are,” she said.
“He also supported me in all my endeavors, but particularly my acting, and he was such a wonderful man,” she said, noting that he would sometimes help her hang the new exhibits.
Theron Brown is a graduate of the jazz program and a respected young local pianist who plays with the Dorsey Orchestra and jazz/funk band the Huntertones, and co-founded the Rubber City Jazz Festival. At 29, Brown is one of the younger branches growing from the Paolucci tree.
“Roland really cared. Passionate about music, a wealth of knowledge, but if you were wrong he’d let you know, and I loved that about him. It was old school,” Brown said.
Brown recalled a time when Mr. Paolucci had him come to his house to pick up some sheet music before a show with the CJO featuring the music of Pat Pace.
“He’d always have a solution … He knew I wasn’t a strong reader, so he wanted to give me the music early so I wouldn’t embarrass myself on this piano feature in front of the CJO. We sat and talked and played through the music. That meant a lot to me,” Brown said.
Both Schantz and Ferguson say they emulate Mr. Paolucci’s teaching and praised his attention to detail, ability to break a piece of music down to its core, then engage and communicate his findings to his students.
“He could communicate with the feeling of a chef, adding that extra pinch of salt that would just make a dish come alive,” Ferguson said. “That’s what he communicated explaining that one small nugget of information that would make a piece work really well. He just had … well, the word is taste.”
For both Schantz and Ferguson, the current jazz scene is a testament to Mr. Paolucci’s dedication and the loyalty he gave to and engendered from his many students.
Ferguson said he visited Mr. Paolucci on Sunday evening shortly before his death, having a few laughs reminiscing about Pat Pace and all the great music and composers he discovered via his old friend, colleague and teacher.
“I was singing a fairly obscure song by a composer and he held up his fingers in that way of his and started conducting,” Ferguson said with a chuckle.
The musical tree Paolucci inadvertently planted continues to grow and spread in classrooms, rehearsal spaces and on stages throughout Akron, Northeast Ohio and the world, but Mr. Paolucci is still the strong center ring at the tree’s heart.
“He was the father of this whole scene,” an emotional Schantz said.
“The guy who started this whole scene and now we’re all just trying to come up to his level and fulfill his dream. But I think that’s a pretty amazing thing to have had a vision back then of what could be,” Schantz said.
“I’m trying really hard, man to live up to it. To try and be as good as we he was.”
Son Eric preceded Mr. Paolucci in death. He is survived by his wife, Marci, children Ilya and Anna, and 12 grandchildren.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.