Weekender Encore: Ted Hall of Long Meadow Ranch — A Musician Hiding in a Vintner’s Body
By Paul Franson
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — After more than a quarter-century of living in Napa Valley and writing about its people, I’ve learned that many of them are not what they seem to be.
Many people whom we know primarily for their wines have had previous lives, and some of those lives continue. Few, however, can match Ted Hall of Long Meadow Ranch.
A leader in organic farming – including grapevines and livestock – he and his wife, Laddie, also created Farmstead Restaurant in St. Helena, which has become one of the city’s most prominent places to eat, learn and be entertained.
And that’s after a remarkable life in business at leading global consultancy McKinsey & Company, helping other businesses prosper. You can find the lengthy details on the Long Meadow Ranch website.
But one aspect of Hall’s life is still unexpected: He’s a respected trombone player who has had a parallel life in music that surfaces once a year at the annual Timothy Hall Foundation Benefit Concert. Its 12th rendition, a celebration of the life and music of Henry Mancini on the 100th anniversary of his birth, occurs on Oct. 6 at Farmstead.
Hall’s interest in music goes back to his earliest days. Born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, he lived on a hobby farm in nearby Potter Township. His grandfather had owned a store and produce garden, which inspired Hall’s interest in farming and food.
His father was a chemical engineer working on a classified project, and he jokes, “My mother was an organic gardener, which meant she was considered a potential Communist threatening my father’s security clearance”
His parents loved music, however, and when he was five, Hall started learning piano. His four siblings are musical too, and Hall modestly claims to be the least talented.
The family moved to La Porte, Texas, near Houston, when he was just starting high school, and his father was transferred to manage a chemical plant.
One day his father came home from a fair with a trombone, telling Ted, “They need trombone players. Learn to play it!”
Though initially unenthusiastic, he took lessons over the summer and did so well that he was appointed first-chair trombone in the high school band in the fall.
Coincidentally, his father went to high school with Henry Mancini, and when Mancini toured, he often got together with Hall’s father. Ted got to meet him backstage, and Mancini encouraged him to excel in the trombone. Those words stuck.
Hall went to Princeton to study electrical engineering, but he continued to play trombone. He joined a big band called The Prospective Sound, formed by a friend, Bill Hershey, and following the lead of popular society bandleader Lester Lanin, who played at dances, weddings and other venues.
Being close to New York, the students often hung out at its clubs. The pinnacle for musicians was the Village Vanguard, where professional musicians gathered on Mondays, their night off, to play what they wanted in the big band led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, a rare Black and white combo in those days.
The custom was for guests who wanted to play there to leave their instrument cases along a wall. At one point, after Hall dropped his case on a Monday night, Jones asked Hall if he wanted to play. He did and wasn’t dismissed after one song, as sometimes happened.
He had arrived.
Hall then did a stint in the Marines before graduating from Stanford Business School and then joining famed consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
In 1977, while working with McKinsey, he co-founded a 17-piece big band known as the Midnight Rounds in San Francisco, a play on the famous Thelonious Monk song, “Round Midnight,” but reflecting that most of its members were physicians or their patients. The players included students referred by John Handy, the jazz master of the saxophone; he was then director of the jazz program at San Francisco State University.
They rehearsed at Moffitt Hospital at UCSF every Sunday, and staff and others filled the auditorium.
In 1993, he co-founded the independent jazz record label Monarch Records with his brother, Stephen. It recorded and released many jazz artists and became part of Tambourine Inc. in 1999. Unfortunately, pirating and changes in music distribution killed that business by 2005.
Meanwhile, his son Timothy died from a brain aneurism in 1996. Hall resumed a project to compose a complete jazz mass that he had first started in 1968 following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. He wanted to create a mass for New Year’s in the transition from 1999 to 2000 in memory of Tim. He collaborated with Dmitri Matheny to create a work, “The New Millennium Mass,” that reflected 2,000 years of musical tradition, though not mainly jazz.
He then took a hiatus from music. He and Laddie bought the Long Meadow Ranch in 1989 and restored it. Its first commercial vintage was 1994.
After resuming performing in 2012 at the behest of famed jazz guitarist Brian Nova, Hall began playing professionally again, including with the jazz orchestra at a well-known men’s arts club and the Brian Nova Big Band.
After opening the Farmstead restaurant in St. Helena, he wanted to create a benefit concert to help fund the Timothy Hall Foundation. This led to the LMR Jazz Orchestra’s annual October concert series.
“That band is about the musicians,” said Hall. “We wanted to attract the best.”
During COVID-19, Hall also took a master class in big-band arranging under Chris Walden, the “composer/arranger to the stars.”
He wanted to create another mass for his 50th wedding anniversary in 2021, though it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, it was jazz.
“It’s the only time the whole Catholic liturgy has been composed totally in jazz,” he said.
With Hall as his collaborator, Walden composed “Missa Iubileum Aureum: Golden Jubilee Jazz Mass.” It includes the five elements of the classical liturgy, four sung in Latin, and uses distinctive jazz chord progressions and improvision. Kurt Elling and Tierney Sutton were the cantors when it was performed live at St. Dominic’s Church in San Francisco and when it was recorded at the Skywalker studio with the LMR Jazz Orchestra. The record has been released to global distribution.
More recently, he commissioned a piece called “Napa Valley Suite” with Tom Scott. The work was performed at the 2023 Timothy Hall Foundation Benefit Concert and is the LMR Jazz Orchestra’s next recording project.
Through all this, Hall has assembled the LMR Orchestra annually except when COVID-19 interfered. This year, in addition to its featuring beloved composer’s Henry Mancini’s music, it includes his daughter Monica Mancini, whom Hall met after her husband, Gregg Field, overheard Hall talking about Mancini around a late-night campfire.
12th Annual Timothy Hall Foundation Benefit Concert: A Celebration of Henry Mancini
The LMR Jazz Orchestra takes the stage to commemorate the 100th birthday of the legendary film and television composer, Henry Mancini on Sunday, Oct. 6, at 4:30 p.m. at Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch. Hear the witty Pink Panther theme, wistful “Moon River” from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the hard-driving music from the TV show Peter Gunn and the many other timeless classics by the composer.
This concert will feature Mancini’s daughter, two-time Grammy-nominated vocalist Monica Mancini.
Known for their musicianship and stage presence, the LMR Jazz Orchestra will be joined by three-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Tom Scott, eight-time Grammy-winning record producer and drummer Gregg Field, and pianist and multi-Grammy-nominated arranger and producer Shelly Berg.
Other members include Grammy-winning trumpeter Steffen Kuehn and baritone saxophonist Dr. Aaron Lington, among others.
This 12th annual Timothy Hall Foundation Concert sustains the foundation’s 25-year record of grant-making initiatives that support innovative, cost-effective K-12 school programs in arts and sciences, including school gardens, animal husbandry projects and music curricula.
Tickets are $55 in advance and $60 at the door. Those 18 and under are free. Low-back chairs and picnic blankets only. More information can be found at their website. Farmstead, 738 Main St., St. Helena
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Paul Franson is the editor of NapaLife, a weekly newsletter that focuses on news and events about food, wine and the arts.
Laddie!! Your family continues to amaze!! Penny
Great story