Sean Noonan plies his art
The Enterprise, Brockton, Massachusetts, August 17, 1999

The jazz drummer makes a local appearance this week before resuming his quest for the big time.

By Mike DeCicco

Jazz drummer and Brockton native Sean Noonan just got back from performing in France in France in late July, buy we had to ask him about it quickly-he’s moving to New York. “New York is the one place in the world where you can see the best jazz musicians,” he explained. “I’ll be exposed to some of the greatest dummers. I’ll learn a lot. Boston is a learning environment. New York is a professional environment. I’m going there for the environment.” Noonan as always gone wherever his passion for jazz has taken him. Last month, his band, THE HUB, played for 10 days in clubs in France. The band, which includes Californian Dan Magay on saxophone and Gloucester native Tim Dahl on bass, in now organizing an eight-country European tour for November, and they are hoping to include Italy, France, Denmark, and Scandinavia. The band’s style, Noonan said, “Is all original music, jazz and different styles, from swing to fusion.” Their first European tour was last summer and took them to Porto, Portugal. From January 1998 to May of 1999, THE HUB was the house band for the Old School Theater, Sanibel Island, FL, playing for revues written by noted Broadway writer and musician J.Y. Smith.

One of the performers there was Marnie Nixon, the motion soundtrack singing voice of Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” “We performed eight times a week,” Noonan said. “We were on an island; we had time for a lot of rehearsing. It was a great experience.”

Noonan became a musician after-as a student at Kennedy Elementary School in Brockton- he saw a performance by the Brockton High School Jazz Band under the direction of Vicent Macrina. Noonan said he started learning the drums after Macrina spoke about his band members earning the chance to travel to Disneyworld.
“It was about being able to go to Disneyworld,” Noonan said. “It was in high school that I got serious.” He performed for four years in the Brockton High School Jazz Ensemble, which received five gold medals in the international Festival of the Nations during his tenure. In high school Noonan also received the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award and was chosen “Most Outstanding Musician” in the Southeast District Festival in 93 and 94. He credits his private teacher, Bob Gullotti, with being the biggest inspiration. “He taught me what jazz really was. He was a drummer for the band, The Fringe, the included John Lockwood on bass and George Garzone on saxophone. It was seeing somebody who was a virtuoso on the drums, sitting six to seven feet from them when they played (that) inspired me to go home and practice.” Noonan said another influence was being on the swim team at Brockton High School. His relay team broke the 200 yard medley relay practicing 3 to 4 hour every day. “It helped me learn how to motivate myself. It was six months of training, hard training. Now I work very hard at it (drumming).” Noonan met Dahl in 1994 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where Noonan started college studies in music. “We started playing together there. We got along pretty well.” Noonan next went to Boston’s Berklee School of Music to study music education. “Berklee for me was all business, all music. I spent hours in their small rehearsal booths. Most every night we’d jam from 6-8 pm and then go to a club or concert. I met people from all over the world. We all had one language in common and that was music.” It was at Berklee that Noonan me Magay in 1995. Noonan, Dahl and Magay first played together on Thanksgiving night at the Blackthorne Tavern in South Easton, “that’s where we found out we clicked was a band.”

They’ve been a successful team ever since. But don’t compliment him to much about it. “It makes me mad when they say to me, ‘you’re so talented,” he said. “I’m not. I have to work at it, work hard at it.” So why does he do it? “Music is art. My goal is to be an artist. I don’t want to just be a jazz drummer, but one who has created a different type of sound. I want to be different that anybody else.” Noonan will return to Brockton on Thursday, when he’ll perform in the Brockton Summer Concert Series at D.W. Field Part.

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