This is a photograph of my NATO ID card from when I served with the Commander In Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe (NATO) Band at Naples Italy. Since it lived in my wallet and inside my pocket, this ID card was actually pristine when I finished that tour of duty in 1992, as well as when I concluded my entire 22-year active duty military career in 1996.
“Time Stamps” by Christopher Burnett (BMI)
The reason it became so tattered is that I gave it to our son, Micah to carry with him when he was deployed and served in combat. He carried it with him the entire time. In 2003, Micah deployed to Iraq with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor device for his exemplary heroic combat service. Yes, he was in the real stuff.
The Second Battle of Fallujah—code-named Operation Al-Fajr (Arabic: الفجر “the dawn”) and Operation Phantom Fury—was a joint American, the Iraqi government, and British offensive in November and December 2004, considered the highest point of conflict in Fallujah during the Iraq War. It was led by the U.S. Marines and U.S. Army against the Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah and was authorized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Government. The U.S. military called it “some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines and Soldiers have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968.”
Micah brought my NATO ID card back home to me as he promised he would. After his time in service, he went back to college, finished a double major, and even initially served in a job that provided services and resources that helped vets. They told me that he was a superstar in that work and enjoyed helping other veterans transition back to the civilian society after serving.
I was a musician in the band my entire career and never came close to combat duty. My son is a true war hero. I love him very much and I’m very proud to be his father. We have lots to be thankful for as a family. All four of us are military veterans, our son is a combat hero and our daughter was the very first commissioned officer in the history of our entire family. That’s cool. We are grateful. SALUTE! 🇺🇸
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
The Paola where I grew up was a place that was well ahead of its time in the USA socially. I think most of the northwest Kansas City metro area can still be considered to be what is termed progressive in this regard. People here generally treat you accordingly to what you do and those who don’t want to associate with you simply don’t. Secure and hearty people. We live on the land of the original peoples and most generations still respect that fact.
I’m a proud fifth generation Kansan.
My great great maternal grandfather Solomon Jackson moved there from Kentucky. He was well respected by everyone in the town. Although there were ethnic neighborhoods, his children, including my great maternal grandfather Edward George Jackson actually attended the integrated Paola public school system over a century ago.
ABOVE PHOTO: Christopher pictured with some of his Burnett cousins from the McKinley Burnett line of the family who visited the jazz museum in Kansas City back in 2015.
This was well before the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court case, known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that struck down a Kansas statute permitting racial segregation in some of the state’s elementary schools. A distant cousin on my paternal side of our family named McKinley Burnett was instrumental in helping win the case.
My maternal grandfather George Jackson was regularly featured during his Paola high school years in their ORIOLE yearbook as one of the star football players in the early 1920s. My maternal side of our family was fractured during my mother Violet’s childhood so I didn’t know much about these three elder generations until very recently.
Kansas history is documented as us having been admitted to the Union as a “Free State” during the period of USA slavery and our Civil War. The abolitionist John Brown has a significant historical connection to a small Miami County city that’s located just seven miles from Paola.
This factor obviously seems to have positively contributed to Paola’s documented cultural and societal attitudes for well over a century. That’s all very cool indeed but no place with human beings is perfect. Paola still had some instances of typical American racism back then.
Families fragment and disconnect over generations for myriad reasons. I’m finding this to be true regardless of any prevailing social, ethnic, and economic paradigms.
The primary blessings that I have taken away from my parents bringing all of us siblings home to Kansas after my father’s active duty Air Force career is my ultimately learning of these aspects of our rich family historical legacy.
Roots and branches are connected and don’t necessarily have to be immediately aware of each other’s existence. I continue to learn a great deal from my ancestors while living in my own time and despite having never met most of them due to being displaced by generations.
American racism has been and is going to be with us. The pendulum of it is always. I’m fortunate to have had elders who modeled the type of character that positively transcends these type of limitations inherent to humanity.
I have since literally traveled extensively in our nation and throughout most of the countries of mainly Western Europe and the greater Mediterranean.
Some places I lived and worked are actually more stifling than the USA and most of the people often look alike. Paola was special.
The family environments that I grew up in as a kid provided a way up for every generation and every ethnicity. The key seems to have been centered upon each one finding then pursuing our own unique life path.
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “Roots and Branches”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
As a kid, I was a self-starter and generally kept busy with mostly constructive and productive things. Notice that I said mostly because I was like most kids and could be a typical knucklehead at times. Never with malicious intentions, but still a kid. I’m not too much different now. We don’t change much as adults.
MUSIC CLIP is “ALWAYS (Is Never Giving Up)” by Christopher Burnett (BMI)
Later as a grown man with a family of my own and nearing the end of my active duty military music career, we were seated at the kitchen table drinking coffee while talking with mom Burnett.
During the conversation, I recall mom telling us that she “never worried about” me as a kid because I was always “busy with good things.” And I felt her trust and confidence in me as a kid.
Mom had come to live with me and Terri Anderson Burnett immediately upon retirement after working several decades in a career at the Osawatomie State Hospital (now defunct) culminating in her professional position as an Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor. She was a year older then than I am now.
Mom lived at our home with T and our children when I was hand-selected for assignment to the multi-service and multi-national NATO Band that was once based in a burrow of Naples, Italy. I was scheduled to return after two years but another great thing happened and I got promoted out of my former position.
I then got chosen for the First Sergeant position with the Student Company at the Armed Forces School of Music during the era when there were 400 basic, intermediate, and advance course students learning there. The school is still located in Virginia.
That’s how mom ended up staying with T and our children while I was away. And I was at the school for just over a year before I was released to fill the First Sergeant and Enlisted Bandleader positions that had come open with the same band where my family had stayed.
I would come home at every opportunity during the separation, usually in 6-month intervals. T, our children, and mom also came to visit me at the school assignment. We had a great time and stayed at the home of a friend in Virginia Beach. I recall mom saying on one of our day excursions that she never thought she “would ever visit Washington D.C.” in her lifetime.
I have been retired from military music since 1996 and I continue to work in the at-large music industry. All of that to say that me and my family have always been busy with mostly good things.
We have started our own businesses since those military music days. Have had ups and downs like everyone does in life but are fortunate to be very resilient people.
We, as a family, have maintained the mindset of a student. Mom used to tell me that I was always curious and a good student. I understand more fully what she meant in saying that.
Some people have to always be “right.” I learned to simply try to find what’s “right” and everything will usually work out best.
Some people want well beyond what they can practically use and truly need. It’s a race to get more stuff, titles, positions, money.
I was blessed with a vision for my life that tells me the purpose of everything that sustains my family and my calling in life.
It took me a lifetime to state this but I’ve always had more than enough at each stage.
My family has been with me all of the way from the beginning. She caught my vision when we both wore Army boots most of the day and rode around to strange towns together playing music.
We have been a family for decades now but we are still growing and learning together, just as we always have.
We are teaching and helping younger musicians, creating our own art, and serving our community as well.
We didn’t realize that we would be just as busy now as we ever have been in our lives. But we are and it is truly perfect for us.
I just finished a couple of commissions, our youth jazz program is in full swing, and I am on a board that is producing a major event in August. Fourth of July week was a little bit of a break for us and the time gave us a chance to be alone together and grow.
Thanks for your patience everyone because we had to regroup.
Sometimes you just need to stop. Yes, I need a haircut and I need to trim up my beard. I have been just puttering around our home doing the odds and ends that I was too busy to get to. Washing and detailing our vehicles. Cleaning up the stain on the garage floor that’s been there for a year. Spending time with my family.
MUSIC CLIP is “INFINITY (Is The Reality)” by Christopher Burnett (BMI)
We did lots of talking, growing individually, and just being together again. I think that we have also truly learned how to be a better family. We were also able to literally get caught up on everything. And we’ll be back to the other cool things we do in life for the rest of the month before our actual vacation in August.
I’m truly a blessed man and musician.
#artistlife #musician #prayerworks
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “Busy with good things…”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
The “best” jazz bandleaders and conductors I’ve encountered have not only been great players but have also been superb composers or arrangers.
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I first formally studied music composition, ensemble arranging, and orchestration techniques as a professional military woodwind musician. I took all of the basic and advanced music courses offered at the Armed Forces School of Music during my era of service.
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These courses were actually conservatory-level instruction and the school of music faculty were typically alumni of the top civilian schools as well.
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I also constantly took college courses by correspondence or at the schools near the military posts wherever I was stationed every year during the 22 years of my career. And I’m still studying.
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Yay, the 200+ undergraduate credit hours I earned during that period resulted in lots of useful knowledge and skills but not necessarily a DMA. 🤷🏽
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And having a DMA wasn’t the point – gaining useful knowledge and professional experience was always the purpose and goal. Applied competence.
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The military is focused on its members having high levels of competency that can be applied in a variety of high profile professional performance situations. I appreciate that fact more fully now.
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As a Jazz artist who improvises coherently, I have always found having a composer’s knowledge and understanding of music to be advantageous for creating original music spontaneously.
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Naturally, I still have some “Jazz language” memorized but I understand that the advanced ultimate goal of improvising isn’t stringing together a bunch of “licks” I learned as a solo.
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Being a professional composer and arranger positively impacts directing and conducting an ensemble.
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You also immediately know what the music should sound like in total. And being versed in the orchestration techniques being applied can help direct performers to serve the music as intended.
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The beauty of the gift of music is that you can do it for yourself and for your entire life, privately or publicly, and still learn something new every day.
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
I still really enjoy golf. I used to play other sports when I was younger and my knees (and other joints) could take the rigors of sprinting and jumping.
I now do the low impact activities and sports like bowling, swimming, and golf. I’m not very good at it but golf has become my favorite.
Sports are like playing a musical instrument in lots of ways. And to be successful or “good” at either requires “Hand-Eye Coordination” and “Mind-Body Control.” 🏌🏽♂️🎵🎶
The objectivity of both music and sports is proven in the results. The musicians and athletes who practice to refine their skills are inherently successful.
The adversities inherent with living can impact our minds, bodies, and spirits. And these are the times when the objective things built into our lives like music and sports can also help us heal our emotional wounds and even grow stronger.
Music, although it is often used to express emotions and opinions, in and of itself – music is what it is. You can either do it or you can’t do it. With either of those conditions not being permanent but based upon whether you practice or not.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “ADAPTING TO CHANGE”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
ABOVE PHOTO: “First Haircut” Christopher, Barber (center), and Dad circa 1957. My mom told me that I wasn’t quite two years old but I don’t remember.
* Clifford LeRoy Burnett (1925-2005) was a great father and I learned lots from him. Dad taught me sports and other things that refined my hand-eye coordination as well as my patience. Dad was patient with everyone. I rarely saw him lose his temper but he rarely needed to flex that side.
* Dad was a member of what journalist Tom Brokaw termed as the “Greatest Generation.” I agree that they were and remain so to this day. They were not perfect but they were instrumental in unifying the country and world in ways that resulted in broader prosperity for most people of earth.
* I will always love and respect my father for the work he did to help me become the positive man I am today. I acknowledge that my propensity to innovate solutions rather than wallow in problems comes from what he modeled during my formative years growing up.
* Dad joined the Navy at 17 years old and served as a SeaBee in the South Pacific during World War Two. He later reenlisted into the Air Force and our sibling family lived in many places beyond our native KC metropolitan area. I was old enough to remember those experiences and I believe that the memories were significant to my serving in Army Music for an entire career.
* Now that I have children and grands, I’m even more appreciative of the subtleties and nuances of being a parent. And in particular, the importance of being a great father to your children as they grow into adulthood.
* Dad was there for me as a kid and by the time I was a man on my own I knew the lessons he was teaching me. I also knew by then that the choices I made in my life were mine and not his responsibility.
SIX “DAD” QUOTES
1 “Tell any intimate associate something confidential, even if you make it up as a test. And if it gets out, you know that you can’t trust them with anything that is important.”
2 “I spend the first six months of the year minding my own business and the other six months staying out of other people’s business.”
3 “A person who will lie to your face is not your friend, son. Regardless if you’re kin or not.”
4 “The benefits of active duty military service are perfect for anyone who wants to travel, learn, and improve their circumstances in life.”
5 “Do the right thing even if it is the hardest choice at first. The impact of doing wrong takes a lifetime to undo.”
6 “Take time to go fishing so you can reconnect with the nature of creation. Sometimes we can forget God’s work and lose appreciation for the things that provide our sustenance.”
QUOTES: Clifford LeRoy Burnett (1925-2005)
* Like most sons, my dad taught me “right from wrong.” And like most sons, I am still trying to make my dad proud everyday.
Happy Father’s Day!
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “FATHERS & SONS”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
I have (and have had for decades) the honor and privilege of working with people of all ages studying music.
* School ages to adults. Amateur players to fellow professionals. We’re all perpetual students of music regardless how long we have been practicing it.
* Note how I refer to doing music as a “practice?”
* That’s because it is. Just like a doctor practices medicine and a lawyer practices law. A musician practices music. Music is both art and science.
* Practice is applied research. Practice builds individual competencies and technical skills.
* Practice allows individuals to create and work in harmony with other musicians who also practice.
* Rehearsals are actually not a place for individuals to practice their individual musical parts.
* Rehearsals are the places for directors and conductors to literally create a larger collaborative musical instrument called an ensemble.
* Ensembles serve the musical work as an instrument created from a group of practiced individual musicians collectively performing together.
* Practicing makes you better.
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “LIFE HABITS”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
Our redbud tree 🌳 is likely going to be removed because she was initially planted too close to our home.
For the last three seasons she’s grown into that corner of the roof. Not her fault. Trees grow.
We’ve lived in our home for ten years and are going to do more landscaping.
It takes a while to actually do a thoughtful plan that’s based around how we actually live in our spaces inside and outside.
Being good stewards in life includes our relationships with all living things.
Sometimes we as humans forget that plants are living things too. #secretlifeofplants
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
5 years ago Terri Anderson Burnett and I started Kansas City Area Youth Jazz because we had a vision that we believed adds tangible value to life based upon our experiences working in music and also contributing to the KC private jazz education paradigm. Doing positive and constructive things with our lives and helping others has always been possible for us through objective study of music.
Special THANKS to Bill Crain, Rev WM Thornton, David Cunningham, William Crain, Houston Smith, and Greg Carroll for being with us each step of the way.
Thank you to the truly incredible community of artists that make up the “KC Jazz Scene” for so many of you sincerely embracing our original vision of “synergy among” all of our jazz generations and our many jazz industry entities!
YOUTH JAZZ utilizes the advantages of its diversely talented community of professionals within the greater Kansas City metropolitan area and beyond. It’s us.
We also understand that truly empowering the next generation requires creating an environment that allows all living generations in the music to interact with one another in the types of meaningful contexts our program provides during each season.
Combining applied performance of the art form with music business best practices presented in our educational learning contexts is a unique benefit of YOUTH JAZZ.
(1) Preparing music to a high level for recording,
(2) performing concerts in the community,
and (3) serving as peer mentors are among the opportunities that FELLOWS are afforded.
Networking among peers and developing relationships with industry mentors are vital skills for building infrastructure and community.
Meet some of our colleagues who have embraced our vision + joined us in this work at the link below.
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan
