Disappearing Act

When I was in high school in Sarnia, Ontario, in the early 1980s, trying to play jazz on my trumpet, there were maybe six guys in the city trying to play jazz on the drums. Easily the best was a beautiful blond boy named Mark with sad blue eyes, the son of a music teacher.

It’s crazy how seriously we took this music. Mark Timmermans took it more seriously than anyone. One time he threw a house party whose stated theme, spelled out on flyers he distributed around our school’s band room, was “Where Has Jazz Gone?” The question was of limited interest to most of our classmates, who showed up to flirt and drink. A smaller group clustered for hours around the record player, where Mark had decreed that on this night, only the recordings of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane could be played.

When we rehearsed, in the band room or at one of our homes, Mark showed good understanding of the loose-limbed, rhythmically complex styles of Elvin Jones and Jack DeJohnette...