At the Chicken Fat Ball in Maplewood, NJ—the subject of this month’s Jazz Travels column—I saw 12-year-old Henry Acker on guitar with Jason Anick’s band. I’m always gratified to see young people playing and preserving our kind of music. So I decided to interview Henry and find out what led him down this path, and to give him some additional exposure.
Henry lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts with his parents and older brother. His father, Victor, is also a musician, as you'll read below, and his mother works at Harvard University. But have no fear that Henry is not a normal kid; he also enjoys gaming and jamming with his musician friends on FaceTime (don't ask me how that works; I’m a technological Neanderthal).
Bill Hoffman: When did you start playing guitar, and what led you to do so?
Henry Acker: I started playing at eight years old. My dad, who is also a guitar player, had a jazz trio in Boston for years and he and my uncle Dana, who plays bass, both went to the Berklee College of Music with scholarships. They were hired to play a show at the French Cultural Center in Boston and were asked to make sure there was a French theme to the show. They decided to dig into the Django Reinhardt repertoire. I was lucky enough to hang out for the rehearsals and be with my dad as he did research into the players.
My dad had always loved Bireli Lagrene and through his videos
