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Dennis Wilson was in the house April 18, polishing three hours nonstop into the evening with Southwestern Michigan College’s Jazz Ensemble for their collaboration April 27 during the 20^th annual Thornapple Arts Council Jazz Festival.

Wilson will lead SMC’s band on a few tunes and solo in Hastings. His gravitas enveloped the theatre in the Dale A. Lyons Building with authenticity, especially when he grabbed his trombone to rip off a solo for the rapt young musicians.

Wilson, lead trombonist for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, has toured, performed, and recorded with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, the New Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, the American Jazz Orchestra, the Benny Carter Orchestra and Slide Hampton’s World of Trombones.

He received a GRAMMY Award nomination for vocal arrangements for Manhattan Transfer and has performed on GRAMMY Award-winning recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Diane Schuur.

Wilson joined the University of Michigan faculty after teaching at Kansas State University, where he also served as an assistant dean for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Wilson, who often presents at conferences of the International Association for Jazz Education, is currently on sabbatical, writing music for next year’s Basie band’s three-day residency at U of M celebrating its 90^th anniversary.

“It’s all being recorded and will go nationwide,” Wilson said.

The celebrated musician and his mentees rehearsed to the granular level such jazz standards as “Li’l Darlin’,” composed and arranged in 1957 by Neal Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra and first recorded on the 1958 album, The Atomic Mr. Basie. It has been called “an object lesson in how to swing at a slow tempo,” or, as Wilson puts it, “lay back. Rhythm section, you don’t lay back, you just keep time.”

“Count Basie didn’t read notes, he placed them,” said Wilson, recently returned from Japan. “You can’t sight-read this chart and know where to place those notes until you’ve been there,” although he had to do just that — at Carnegie Hall, no less.

They also rehearsed an original Wilson chart, “Dark Morning,” and “The Queen Bee” from Basie’s 1968 album, Straight Ahead.

Pianist William J. “Count” Basie (1904-1984) over his 60-plus-year career, helped establish jazz as a serious art form played not just in clubs, but in theaters and concert halls. Basie led the band for seven of Wilson’s 10 years.

Basie earned nine GRAMMYS, making history in 1958 as the first African-American. Basie recorded a 1962 album with Frank Sinatra.

“This was most definitely a highlight of the year for our department!” said Director of Bands Mark Hollandsworth.

Hollandsworth met the clinician in 2001 when he taught in Ann Arbor right out of college as a long-term substitute. Wilson’s drummer son was one of his eighth-grade students.

“He sent me a letter thanking me for the creativity I was bringing into the classroom. I still have it,” Hollandsworth said. “Then I saw him lead the Basie band in Chicago.”

The two men crossed paths again in January at the Michigan Music Conference in Grand Rapids.

Cassopolis tenor saxophonist Seth Kalina prepared for his own Carnegie Hall performance in February by listening to jazz greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins  and poring over omni books — note-for-note solo transcriptions.

Kalina hung around afterward, basking in Wilson’s wisdom, a beatific smile affixed to his face