Concert-goers Dance Through the Night at Endicott

Friday night's "Music Under the Tent" fundraiser at the Endicott Estate was a music-filled kick-off to three days of Oktoberfest weekend festivities. The night was full of jazz and good ol'-fashioned rock-and-roll that inspired lots of dancing by a charitable coterie of active community members.    

"I think it's working out very well," said event chair Michelle Heffernan, who's served on the Oktoberfest board for four years and the chair for one.

This particular night, she said, if smiles are criteria enough for success, the cheerfulness inside the festival tent was tangible enough to reach out and taste. Just ask the two ladies who danced a majority of the night away, even when they were the only ones on the dance floor.

"I've grown up [in Dedham] and live near the estate. I want to see it preserved," said Jane Baker while on dance leave after The Contentment's first set. Her footloose counterpart Barbara Ann Dwyer added that she wants the estate "preserved and utilized for the community."

Heffernan told of how the Estate was intended, in its earliest days, for not any single person, but the community at large.

"Katherine Endicott willed the estate to the town for everybody to enjoy. Everybody who wants to use it can," she said.

The Contentments played golden oldie jukebox-worthy rock-and-roll, covering the early 1960s in thorough detail with strings as well as horns. They had a rigid set list, but that didn't prevent some from making facetious requests: "Lady Gaga!" yelled a particularly overzealous audience member. Most of their material was dance-friendly and found happy feet answering the call of the female vocalist's beckoning:  "Come out on the dance floor!  The floored is waxed and dry!"

The infectiousness of the Contentments was preceded by the mellow of a jazz troupe called the Joe Brogan Jazz Trio.  The "trio" (there were actually five musicians onstage) kept people in positive aura, if not fully attentive to the various soloing units onstage. Everybody felt comfortable maintaining steady conversation in circular packs, seated and not, while equating their attendance to a sense of unspoken appreciation. 

Joe Brogan is the group's sax player and is the fine arts director of Dedham Public Schools (retired music director). He played with purpose, as a musician, but also as an exponent of the fundraiser that was the night's impetus.

"Bringing young people and adults together isn't something that happens very often in the school day. We hope to do it through music. Let's make it happen," Brogan said. 

Simultaneously, semi-formally dressed men led the night in instrumental euphony while others stood with hands in pockets or under drinks. The youngest participants stood as near the source of music as possible.

One in particular with flipped chestnut hair wearing a white polo named Evan O'Connor, an agricultural student and community service volunteer has a personal history with a few of the musicians as a student.  O'Connor had Donald Heald, the bassist, for a band director in middle school during his year in the marching band. 

"I like jazz. It's not my favorite, but I enjoy it," O'Connor said. 

"There aren't too many kids considering no one under 21 is allowed [due to the availability of alcohol], but I was hoping some of the [former] bandies would come. [They could] sell tickets," said Henri Gough who is on the board of the Dedham School of Music, as well as the Katherine Endicott Foundation. 

So many people within the tent's spacious loft were involved as either committee or faculty members, musicians, or public school attendees (sometimes even all three).

Marylou Wafford came to support her husband, a board member.

"We support each other in all endeavors," Wafford said.

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