There's a reason Gregg Hill loves the Summer Solstice Jazz Fest. It's where he met his wife

Gregg Hill holds a special place in his heart for the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, which this year Friday and Saturday in East Lansing.

It's where he met his wife, Lois Mummaw, in 2006.

Hill, a lifelong fan of jazz, sponsored the big band main stage that year. He and Mummaw continue to be major sponsors of the event.

“I spotted Lois dancing with the band’s music and she had a moon rock on her finger and I said, 'Well, she’s probably married. I don’t want to be involved with an angry husband or something.'”

But Mummaw approached him after the show, along with her son, to thank Hill for sponsoring the stage. Hill wondered whether she'd realized he had been noticing her.

Hill’s first wife had died two years earlier and they had two sons. Mummaw was a single mother.

“We exchanged phone numbers then and met at the Green Door the following night and we’ve been together ever since,” Hill, 78, said. They were married three years later.

Mummaw was a free spirit who loved folk music and dancing, but Hill soon converted her to the jazz scene. “She sort of stumbled in,” he said.

Now Mummaw and Hill are a key jazz couple in the Lansing area. They sponsor concerts in their home, underwrite local jazz musicians, go to jazz concerts all over the world as well as participate in jazz cruises. Committed to the local community, Mummaw and Hill can be seen at every concert at the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, passing the bucket for donations and helping out in many ways. Hill can be spotted by his ubiquitous wild music shirts.

Slowly over the years, Hill has taken his love of jazz to a new level. He developed a skill at writing jazz music, despite his lack of formal training. The compositions he's written have been highly respected by jazz musicians who have performed them at concerts and on CDs.

“Gregg’s music can be heard all over the world on radio stations and has a strong following,” Rodney Whitaker, director of the Michigan State University Jazz Department, said.

Hill has written about 170 songs and said he has no desire to stop.

“My parents were part of the swing band craze in the '40s and '50s," said Hill, who originally is from Midland. "My mother was a small woman who they threw around on the dance floor. My dad was a real music nut. They would travel all over the Midwest seeing the likes of Duke Ellington and the other greats of the time.

“I really grew up in a jazz household, and that’s what it takes. On a jazz cruise recently I watched several great jazz performers describe how they became interested in jazz. All of them spoke about growing up in jazz households where everyone played music.”

Soon Hill followed his dad to check out the clubs in Detroit. On his own, he learned to play saxophone.

“I was a mediocre clarinet player, but then I picked up the saxophone and that thing just turned my world on fire. For me the saxophone was like a piece of cake and I just loved the sound of it. I fell in love.”

Hill got involved in the Midland High School jazz band and remembers spending lots of time with “jazz cats from all over the country. I said to myself, 'this is my life now.'”

After high school, Hill drove truck for regional trucking companies. But that job did not get in the way of his love for jazz.

"I drove around Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and picked and found stations that played jazz," he said. "Also, I had a tape player and owned thousands of cassettes. Music never stopped. I’m not a singer, but I could sing in the truck, which also kept me awake.”

In 1984, he left the trucking industry and took music classes at MSU. He also took lessons with local jazz pianist Arlene McDaniel “just enough to improve my technique.”

He calls himself an autodidact.

“I dove into books in the '80s but couldn’t spend more time on music because of family and work demands," Hill said. "And the passion returned − the same passion I had for the saxophone, and I turned it into composing. I delved in it headfirst.”

Hill has become a favorite in MSU’s jazz department. Trombonist Michael Dease, guitarist Randy Napolean and Whitaker have recorded albums of Hill’s music. The composer underwrites the recordings and the music arrangers.

"When you’re writing a piece of jazz music, you know it will be improvised," he said. "You know that you are giving this to a musician and you have not completed the music. The music is completed when Randy Napolean plays in on his guitar.

“That is why the guys like my music. I give them a platform that they can create on top of what I have written. It turns them loose. Sometimes they write their own arrangements. And then they can go on a flight of creativity all their own. I give them the freedom to do that.”

If you go

Summer Solstice Jazz Festival

• When: 6-10 p.m. Friday and 3-10 p.m. Saturday

• Where: Downtown East Lansing

• Headliners: Endea Owens & The Cookout, 9 p.m. Friday; SuperBlue: Kurt Elling & Charlie Hunter, 9 p.m. Saturday

• Cost: Free

• Info: www.eljazzfest.com

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Summer Solstice Jazz Festival runs Friday, Saturday in East Lansing