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San Antonio saxophonist Noah Peterson has made his living playing jazz. Given where he was raised, his is an atypical story.
“I grew up in Billings, Montana. Kind of cut my teeth on the music scene in the West Coast and landed in San Antonio in 2012 and been calling this lovely, blessed place my home ever since,” Peterson said.
Every Sunday for the last few years he's played at Boerne’s Dodging Duck.
“I call it the best jazz brunch in Texas,” he said. “So every Sunday from 11a.m. to 2 p.m. we're doing jazz brunch at the Dodging Duck in [Boerne] Texas, on 402 River Road, and we've been there for about three and a half years. We're there pretty much every Sunday, no matter what.”
The "river" that River Road references isn’t actually a river. It’s Cibolo Creek.
The Dodging Duck restaurant name references the ducks from the creek waddling across River Road, not always successfully.
Peterson's band is a trio, and he sounds pretty impressed by his musical collaborators.
“My guys, I got Larry Natwick on the keys, who's been playing professionally for 70 years. I got Damon Rodriguez on the bass. [He] is an excellent musician on a number of different instruments, or a number of different styles.”
Peterson said that part of playing this kind of gig is reading the crowd. And audiences on a given day vary quite a bit.
“If people are really there for the jazz, we're gonna push the jazz hard,” Peterson said. “If they're there for the brunch, we're gonna kick back and paint a beautiful little brunch scene.”
The setting is a pleasant one to play, with large trees, a deck and Cibolo Creek just across River Road.
Peterson said one of his objectives is to "make sure that everyone's having a good time and enjoying their experience."
