Look for this woman on 60 Minutes next week

My friend Lynn LaPlante Allaway’s daughter Lucy started pre-school this year, and whoa, has Lynn taken advantage of the free time! In the past few months, Lynn has

• finished the rough draft of a novel she’s been working on
• started her own Backwards and in High Heals blog, and
• been asked to write regularly for the Huffington Post

All this while she and her husband Mike herd their four (yes, four) active children to school and various activities in-between her rehearsals and performances as principal violist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (CJP).

Lynn’s mother Alice Gervace LaPlante (left, a talented musician in her own right) with her daughter at one of Lynn’s concerts.

You might recognize the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic’s name. The orchestra’s director Orbert Davis happened to be in Havana coaching music students there when Raul Castro announced the thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba. Davis and those students were featured in a 60 Minutes story last December, and in a Chicago Tribune story this week jazz critic Howard Reich says that when that historic announcement was made on television last year, the young Cuban musicians Davis was working with cheered and the percussion section jumped into a rumba. More from this week’s Chicago Tribune article:

Throughout the rehearsals and the performance, Davis was bowled over by what his Cuban charges achieved. “When presented with every challenge in jazz, the students rose to the challenge,” he says. “Especially the two monsters, which are swing and improvisation. They nailed it.”

Those Havana music students arrive here in Chicago today to spend a week preparing for a concert with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic this Friday, November 13, and reporters from 60 Minutes ar here, too, to follow them from rehearsals to visits to Chicago landmarks like Millennium Park and Navy Pier. “It’s going to be a little time warp for them, especially to see modern cars for the first time, to see the Willis Tower, which is three or four times taller than the tallest building in Cuba,” Davis told the Chicago Tribune.

My friend Lynn is in the middle of all this, and you can read her take on it in a piece she wrote for Huffington Post Chicago earlier this month. Tickets are still available for this Friday’s concert at the Auditorium Theatre, but if you can’t make it to Chicago, I’m guessing the segment about these young musicians from Cuba will air next week, November 15, 2015 on 60 Minutes.

I’ve heard the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic live many times before and was thrilled to watch 60 Minutes last December when Orbert Davis was in Cuba. My heart sunk, though, when the show pointed out that sanctions had forced these young Cuban sax and clarinet players to use reeds that were 30 or 40 years old. My hope is that when I listen in on the 60 Minutes segment next week, I’ll hear that the new relationship between Cuba and the U.S. means these young musicians can bring new reeds across the border for their friends back home!