Sunday: Jazz Juvenocracy at The Irish Rover

You may have heard them play at the Downtown Sarasota Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, where the sounds of professional-quality horns and drums drew you to their "stage" on Lemon Avenue. Once there, you'd no doubt have looked twice to see if your eyes were playing tricks on you. How could those smooth sounds and flawless performances be coming from kids?

Jazz Juvenocracy is a band composed entirely of middle school and high school students from Sarasota, and they've been impressing audiences for three years. You can hear them tonight from 6PM to 10PM at The Irish Rover, in Gulf Gate.


The band consists of six teenagers, ranging from 13 years to 18 years old. The idea for the group was theirs, and as a result of their weekly Saturday performances in front of a local grocery store, Greg Nielsen, a jazz trombonist who's performed with Slide Hampton, Cab Calloway, Ron Carter, Bobby Shew, Nancy Wilson and many other jazz legends, offered to coach them.

Since then, Jazz Juvenocracy has played regularly at jazz clubs in Florida. Individual members of the group have performed at the Grammy Awards, The Berklee Jazz Festival and the Clearwater Jazz Festival. This summer, they'll tour Europe, with dates already booked at the Jazz a Vienne Festival in France, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and The Tuscany and Umbria Festivals in Italy. Jazz Juvenocracy musicians are Austin Parker Gill, guitar; Alex Hernandez, tenor and soprano sax;Brent Layman, upright and electric bass; Bit Risner, trumpet, flugel horn and vocals; Rodney Rocques, drums; and Tommy Silverman, alto sax, clarinet, flute and EWI.

The Irish Rover is smoke-free and family-friendly, with a full dinner menu, in addition to drinks. No cover for the Jazz Juvenocracy show there tonight.