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Ten-year-old trumpeter Geoff Gallante is playing a free concert of jazz standards on May 1, at 4 p.m., at the Heritage Presbyterian Church in Alexandria. Jean Baptiste will be playing piano, Michael Bowie will be playing bass, and Harold Summey will be on the drums at the show.
Since first picking up the trumpet at the age of four—-not to make you feel like an underachiever in any way—-Gallante’s played hundreds of shows, including performances at the Kennedy Center and the White House, on The Today Show and The Tonight Show, playing the national anthemeer at some sports arenas, and as a guest soloist with military ensembles and pops orchestras and big bands.
The May 1 show “is the first time it’s under my own name,” Gallante says. “I hope they fill the whole entire place up.”
In case you can’t make the May 1 show, on the weekends you can often see Gallante in front of the Torpedo Gallery at the Old Town Alexandria waterfront, playing jazz and bebop outside on his trumpet and coronet. He’s wearing a trademark sportsjacket and a hat—-a tribute, he says, to the jazz style of his heroes from the 1940s and 50s—-looking (and sounding) every bit the young Chet Baker, with either his mother or father standing nearby, wearing regular mom and dad clothes and looking quite intent and proud.