Your Neighbor: Al Hixon

Music has played a vital part in Al Hixon’s life. At 6, he received a complete trap drum set, and at 8, he began taking lessons.

It has been his passion ever since.

“Jazz is such an emotional thing … ” he said. “It’s the difference between what your head and your heart feel through your ear, so you never play the same thing twice. It’s always different.”

Hixon continued to learn, practice and play drums throughout his schooling. In seventh grade, he was invited to join the high school band, in which he excelled with many other talented musicians, and in college he formed the University of Massachusetts dance band and became its first student manager.

But music was not Hixon’s only creative outlet. He channeled his energies into his career as a landscape architect, as well.

“I love painting, I love poetry, and I love creating,” Hixon said. “Landscape architecture is taking land and creating with it. (It is) making a place people can live in and move through, but at the same time it’s very scientific. People think of landscape architects as people who mow lawns and plant bushes … I didn’t do any of that.”

He worked on 1,600 projects from Miami to Montreal, one of the biggest being a master-planned city for 100,000 people. In the late 1960s, Hixon set up a satellite office in St. Armands and began exploring the surrounding areas, including Longboat Key.

Like many residents, he and his wife, Dottie, were drawn to the Key’s beauty and warmth, but they were also attracted to something else.

“The exciting thing about the jazz scene here is when Johnny Carson moved ‘The Tonight Show’ to California. The band quit because they didn’t want to go to California … and they retired down here,” said Hixon.

The couple has now lived on the Key for more than two decades, and Hixon has enjoyed sharing the stage with talented musician after talented musician around the Sarasota area.

He currently plays for various events and dinners, but greatly enjoys the rush of jazz jams at 15 South Ristorante on St. Armands two nights a week.

“You always want to be nervous when you take the stage because you always want to be on,” Hixon said. “You never want to take it for granted.”

Neighborhood: Longboat Terrace
Your neighbor since: 1990

Contact Kelsey Grau at [email protected]