Vicki practices her skills by playing with bands and combos throughout the west coast. She performs regularly with the Lincoln Pops Big Band as lead trumpet, Bill Borcher’s Oregon Jazz Band and, of course, Calamity Jazz Band. You may occasionally hear her fill in with the well-known Swing Shift Jazz Band or Lincoln County Concert Band. She currently acts as Jam Coordinator for the Traditional Jazz Society of Oregon (TJSO) and also supports and jams for jazz societies throughout the United States.

Although she is presently employed as a senior technical writer, she studied music at the University of Oregon, majoring in musical performance. She continues to study music privately and at adult jazz camps throughout the year.

Seriously though, this versatile artist brings a cornucopia of skills to any stage. Not only is she a sought-after “sideman” for various jazz, Dixieland, bluegrass and ragtime combos, but she also performs as a soloist, accompanist, and is a transcriber and arranger of all forms of music.

It would be faster to name the instruments Meg Graf doesn’t play, as her skills encompass a broad set; including piano, flute, clarinet, all the saxes (including bass sax), accordion, fiddle, and even hammered dulcimer. Her love of all these instruments is reflected in her particular fondness of “Big George,” her 1924, nickel-plated, Conn bass saxophone. Although the huge horn is taller than she is when seated, veteran sax players are often envious of the big, full sound she generates.

Like the many instruments she’s mastered, Meg’s repertoire is broad and extensive. From classical to jazz, from ragtime to bluegrass; her catalog of tunes is endless. She takes special pride in her inventory of ragtime numbers for piano, having successfully accomplished a personal goal of memorizing one ragtime piece every two weeks. Since this has been going on for quite a while, you can imagine the vast stable of tunes already under her fingers. And reading/sight-reading are not a problem either, as Meg is always anxious to discover new musical “gold nuggets” from her own growing sheet music library, or from whatever new or vintage composition is set before her.

In high school and college,  John played in the marching and concert bands, in his father’s big band, and of course... the obligatory rock-n-roll bands. Residing in Oregon since 1986, John has played drums in a rhythm and blues band, an Afro-Cubanismo group, for  straight-ahead jazz trios as well as a marching band. But jazz has always been  his heartbeat. All of his percussive history culminates in the Calamity Jazz  Band.