‘Smooth and Hot’: RML Jazz to perform at Mt. Lebanon Library

When members of RML Jazz recorded an album a few years ago, they had a reason to call it “Keepin’ It Smooth and Hot!”
“People have a different perspective a lot of times as to what jazz is. Their preconceived notion sometimes is: It’s that slow, boring stuff,” bandleader and percussionist Rick Laus explained. “We try to find things that people know and that people like.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Peters Township resident Jeff Leonhardt is a retired Upper St. Clair School District music teacher.
With a repertoire that features instrumentals by the likes of Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Pittsburgh native George Benson, with Laura Wiens adding vocals to songs such as “Old Devil Moon” and “Nature Boy,” RML Jazz continues the tradition of performing what many view as America’s classical music, keyboard player Glenn Utsch included.
“Jazz, in a sense, is like classical music,” the longtime Slippery Rock University music instructor said prior to the band’s recent Concert in the Park appearance in Crafton.
“You just don’t get the depth in rock music of the material, the chords and forms, as you do in jazz, plus the improvisation and the voicings,” he explained. “The whole thing is very challenging.”
He and the other RMLers – along with Laus and Wiens, Mike Clancy on saxophone and flute, Jeff Leonhardt on guitar and Perry Pinto on bass – are more than adept at meeting the challenge, as they’ll demonstrate during their Concert in the Courtyard show from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Aug. 16 at Mt. Lebanon Public Library.
“For me, it’s exciting because everything isn’t predetermined,” Wiens said about her affinity for jazz. “There’s quite a bit of flexibility. There’s a landing pad, the melody that I get to sit with, and then everything from there can take off in a lot of different directions.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Glenn Utsch has a doctorate in music and teaches at Slippery Rock University.
Soloing, for example: Clancy, Leonhardt and Utsch consistently impress audiences with their virtuoso turns on their respective instruments, while Laus and Pinto provide an unfailingly solid rhythm.
The roots of RML Jazz go back to the mid-1990s, when some of the members met and began to perform with one another, and Laus gathered the musicians together in 2000 to form a pop-oriented band with a female singer called Groove Merchant.
“We incorporated jazz in that group,” the Collier Township resident explained, the instrumentalists enjoyed that aspect so much that they started a side project along those lines. “We started out with a few gigs, and each year we got more bookings and more popular with it. So that’s the one that took off.”
Among the members was his brother Gene, a trumpet and flugelhorn player who plays on “Keepin’ It Smooth and Hot!” and composed the featured track, “Kevin’s Heaven,” as a tribute to Rick’s late son, Kevin.
When Kevin developed disabilities as an infant, his father had been playing music part-time and concentrating on his job. To help provide the supervision and care that was necessary for his son, Laus opted for a career change.
“I took a family leave and made some contacts with a lot of school districts to teach percussion,” he said. “So in 1996, I started music full-time.”
Music instructors abound in RML Jazz: Clancy, a Bethel Park resident, teaches in Baldwin-Whitehall School District, and Leonhardt, who lives in Peters Township, is retired after teaching for three decades in Upper St. Clair School District.
“One of the great things about it,” Leonhardt said about the band, “is that everybody is here to make the ensemble sound great. There’s a lot of give and take throughout the evening, and we try to make sure that when anybody is being featured, we’re supportive.

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Perry Pinto also plays trombone with his own Dixieland group, the Dixie Cups.
“We love playing together,” he attested. “It’s kind of an education as well as a gig.”
Jazz features prominently in the band members’ musical backgrounds, often at early ages.
“In fourth grade, I asked my mom if we could find out what a saxophone was supposed to sound like. So she took me to Oasis, and we asked the guy what we should look at,” Clancy recalled.
The clerk referred them to the jazz section. He found an album by alto player Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, and the rest is history.
Pinto started as a horn player, too, taking up trombone in grade school.
“I was playing in big bands, community bands, too,” he said. “At the time, that was very common, a concert every week.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Laura Wiens has created music for two BBC radio dramas and performed with funk and blues bands in Belgrade, Serbia.
He asked a teacher how he could get more gigs and was told:
“Learn to double on electric bass. Think about it. You already read the bass clef, and how many bands have a trombone player?”
Even on his new instrument, he stuck with jazz.
“When everyone was playing Zeppelin or the Stones,” he explained, “I was still in the Big Band mode.”
Laus’ musical influences include his mother, Mary, a singer who cut a record back in 1946, and Uncle Amerigo “Riggie” Laus, a member of the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame. Rick got his professional start 50 years ago, when he and some junior high school friends formed a combo in Penn Hills.
“We played weddings, and we even played at a fundraising event for Pete Flaherty when he was running for mayor,” he said. “We mainly got a lot of work because everybody thought we were cute, because we were so young.”
From then on, he has played music of a wide variety of genres – as he tells his students, “Learn to play everything that comes along” – with jazz always near the top of the list.
That goes for his keyboard player, too.
“I feel it’s one of those art forms you can be with for life,” Utsch said, “and still grow and listen.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Perry Pinto, left, performs with Mike Clancy, a Bethel Park resident who teaches in Baldwin-Whitehall School District.

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
From left are Perry Pinto, Mike Clancy, Rick Laus and Jeff Leonhardt.