When I was nine years old, my father’s friend, jazz bassist Buddy Jones, brought his friends Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and a drummer whose name I’ve forgotten, out to our house to play music. They were the first grown-ups I had ever seen who so obviously loved their work. I was transfixed, not only by the music, but also by their humor, relaxation, and sense of being in the moment. I vowed to have a life like that when I grew up.

I did grow up, amazingly enough, and Buddy Jones remained my friend and mentor until the day he died, a father-figure god-father of the best kind; less complicated, more detached, and less judgmental than my own. He initiated me into many things, but about the most important was how to listen and really “hear” music—the complexity, the plays on words, the puns, soulfulness of a speaker. It was a priceless gift.

Along the way, Buddy adopted another son named Bruce Forman. It was Buddy’s manner to praise his family members inordinately, to bless their talents, to delight in their personalities and individuality, and I suppose it was this very generosity which made sibling rivalry impossible. I met Bruce and we became fast friends, cemented by the grout of our mutual relationship to our “dad,” Buddy. We both attended his dying. While I had known him longer, Bruce, living near him, and being a jazzman himself who’d played with him weekly, had a channel that superseded mine, as did his responsibilities in the last days. When Buddy was gone, it was clear that the torch, whatever it illuminated, had passed to another generation--and we were it!

Bruce’s work with the JazzMasters is the clearest way that I can think of to transmit the legacy of Buddy Jones, and the entire jazz community, historical and present. These mostly unrecognized geniuses of American cultural life are still strumming in the dark for dimes, for the most part, invisible to mass culture. Yet the apprenticeship to play jazz is so rigorous, and the legacy so broad and deep, that without institutions like JazzMasters, this vital aspect of American culture would soon die out. I have neither the chops nor the IQ to be a jazzman, much as I would love to be. I have other knowledge of the world though, gleaned from carrying a “jazzhead” through different rooms than those Buddy and Bruce have traveled. When Bruce asked me to join the board, I was thrilled. Membership offers me an opportunity to contribute to our godfather’s legacy and return the gifts not only of jazz music, but of jazz-consciousness to the world. Also, this is what brothers are supposed to do.

PETER COYOTE has performed for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including: Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Walter Hill, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Diane Kurys, and Sidney Pollack . Born in the East, Coyote became a professional theater-actor during his early twenties, first as an actor at San Francisco ’s Actor’s Workshop, and then as an actor -writer-director at the San Francisco Mime Troupe. One of Mr. Coyote’s plays (Olive Pits - co-authored with Peter Berg, directed and performed by Coyote), won the Troupe a coveted OBIE from New York ’s Village Voice newspaper in 1967.

Coyote began film-acting in the late Seventies and it was Walter Hill’s chilling Vietnam parable, Southern Comfort which brought Peter to the attention of Steven Spielberg who cast him as the sympathetic scientist in ET – The Extra-Terrestrial . Since then Coyote has created strong characterizations in: Cross-Creek , Timeride r , Heartbreakers , The Legend of Billie Jean , The Jagged Edge , Outrageous Fortune , Unforgettable, Sphere and Patch Adams .

Extremely popular in Europe,(Coyote was the third man ever to appear on the cover of French “ELLE”) he has starred for Spanish director, Pedro Almodovar in Kika , Diane Kurys in A Man in Love , and Roman Polanski in the controversial Bitter Moon . More recently, he appearred as “Barnes”, in Barry Levinson’s , Sphere , and Patch Adams with Robin Williams. He has recently completed the role of “Kurt Potter” for Steven Soderburg in Erin Brockovich , starring Julia Roberts and Albert Finney, and the husband of Kristin Scott Thomas (his co-star from Bitter Moon .) in Sidney Pollack’s Random Hearts, starring Kristin and Harrison Ford..

Coyote has also starred in a number of exceptional television movies and mini-series, among them A Seduction in Travis County , Living a Lie, Privileged Information, The People vs. Jean Harris, Echoes in the Darkness, Buffalo Girls. He played “Jim Bowie” in the TNT production, Two for Texas, and most recently, “Harvey Milk” in Showtime’s Execution of Justice.

Onstage, he performed often at San Francisco ’s illustrious Magic Theater and starred in Martin Epstein’s two plays, Charles the Irrelevant (written for him) and Autobiography of a Pearl Diver , as well as in the world premiere of Sam Shepard’s , True West in 1980 .

Mr. Coyote has written a memoir of his Sixties adventures called Sleeping Where I Fall which received universally excellent reviews, sold five printings in hardback and is in its second printing in paperback after being released by Counterpoint Press. A chapter from that book, “ Carla’s Story , won the 1993/94 Pushcart Prize for Excellence in non-fiction. He is preparing to direct an original screenplay called Crimes of Opportunity for Lion’s Gate Films, and has recently finished the script of a pilot of an original series called 5150 sold to CBS-TV, and is currently writing two screenplays.

Mr. Coyote is well-known for his voice-over work, and in 1992 won an EMMY as the “Host” for a nine-hour series, called, The Pacific Century.