I intentionally ran into Lance Brunious again playing or, better said, practicing playing the trumpet at a street corner in the Saintly City the other day.

It was an encounter that further confirmed for me why I’m a believer in the six-degrees-of-separation theory.

The theory holds that most everyone in the world is, in a general sense, separated from everyone else by just six links. Or, a better way to say it, we are connected to many others outside our immediate circle. It’s just a matter of degrees.

In fact, sociologist Duncan Watts came up with the online Small World Project 11 years ago to test out the decades-old theory that inspired a play as well as a movie starring actor Will Smith.

More than 60,000 people from 170 countries took part in the project back then, according to an ABC News report.

Of the hundreds of chains that have been completed, Watts found that “the average number of links has been six, supporting the six degrees of separation theory.”

Call my encounter with Brunious last week no more than three degrees of separation. It took place after a colleague informed me about a charming, well-dressed man who has been playing the horn almost daily at the southwest corner of Victoria Street and Grand Avenue for several weeks now.

I figured, what the heck, I would go and check him out. I have a soft spot for street performers. I’ve often seen better talent and musicianship on the streets of St. Paul or the subway platforms and stations in New York City than, say, some of the household names who are raking in millions and lauded in pop culture and social media. But this troubadour’s first name, Lance, kept gnawing at me.

Lance. Lance. And then the bell rang when I came face-to-face with the guy my colleague, Pioneer Press photographer Ginger Pinson, told me about in an email.

Lance? Lance!

It turns out that Lance is one of the gym rats who occasionally shows up and hoops with and against me in pick-up games at the Eastside Y. At 40, he is jack-rabbit quick and has an unorthodox, high arc shot that comes from the hip and rises like it’s going to hit the gym ceiling before it swishes through the net.

No. It cannot be. All I’ve known about him up to this meeting was his first name, his genial nature and that, other than my humble fashionista self, he was the best dresser walking out of the sweaty men’s locker room.

But what makes this chance encounter even sweeter was the back story I never knew about.

Lance, who played trumpet while attending Battle Creek Middle School and Harding High School, was the former quasi-famous Twin Cities rapper known as I.L.I.C.I.T. Lance had put the trumpet down in favor of his generation’s pop music genre and recorded and toured throughout the U.S. and Canada until about two years ago.

But this was the kicker for me: He is also the son of acclaimed New Orleans-based jazz trumpet player and vocalist Wendell Brunious, the longtime former bandleader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. His grandfather, John “Picket” Brunious, a trumpeter and pianist, arranged for Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine and Louis Armstrong. His late great-uncle, Willie Santiago, is reportedly one of the first guitarists ever recorded in American music and played alongside Buddy Bolden, one of the founding fathers of New Orleans ragtime, the precursor to jazz.

Lance, the product of a short relationship between his dad and mom, was 10 when his mother relocated to the Twin Cities. He did not grow up with his dad but reconnected with him in 1993 when he was 16. He is the younger spitting image of his musician father.

But then came a life-changing event in 2012 when Lance, immersed in his hip-hop career, traveled to his birthplace to attend the funeral of his maternal grandmother. Father and son bonded, Lance said. Lance was curious about his family and musical roots. Wendell, as well as others, obliged.

The elder Brunious, as he would later share in an Offbeat magazine interview, emphasized not only musical ability but appearance:

“It’s very, very important to dress nice for a gig,” he said. “Think of a lawyer’s office: If he’s got on a T-shirt and jeans, don’t go in there. This is a business to me. That’s why I practice so hard and study, so I can play the best that I can possibly play.”

His son took that advice to heart.

“He said he was proud of me,” Lance, a business consultant for startups and the divorced father of an 11-year-old son, told me of that dad-son encounter as he took a break to chat.

“He asked me if I still had a trumpet. I said no,” Lance shared. “He picked one from his collection and gave it to me.”

Lance gradually turned away from his hip-hop career.

“I just outgrew it,” he said. He began to embrace and appreciate his musical roots, which is why he picked up the trumpet his father gave him and began taking lessons again.

Lance, who is also a pretty decent vocalist like his father, played his first professional gig as a trumpet player Aug. 20 when he joined the St. Paul-based Umoja percussion quintet at a show at the Minnesota Music Cafe.

He knows he is hardly Freddie Hubbard or anywhere near Satchmo or his father’s talents on the trumpet. Still, passersby listen and drop change or a dollar in his small trumpet case.

“I’ve been listening to you the past several days,” a man said as he dropped a bill into the small case. “Thanks. I’ve enjoyed it.”

“Appreciate it,” a middle-aged woman said a few moments later after coming out of a building that houses both the Bonfire and Cafe Latte eateries.

“You know, people have told me to go to Minneapolis, Nicollet Mall, so I could make more money,” Lance told me. “I did go there. There are three times, five times more people. But I made the same money.

“You know why?” he asked me without waiting for a response. “Over there, a guy playing the trumpet is nothing special. But over here, it’s ‘Oh, there’s a guy playing the trumpet! That’s special.’ ”

New Orleans is no doubt in his blood and DNA. But the Twin Cities will always be home.

“New Orleans is the motherland, but I love it here,” he said. “I love this place. It’s the best place in the world.”

He’s looking forward to Oct. 23, when his dad, who he has not seen in a few years, and other New Orleans jazz stars are scheduled to perform at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

“I’m excited. I plan to be there in the first row,” Lance told me. Related Articles Stephen L. Carter: The Breonna Taylor settlement is part of the solution

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His goal right now is to get better on the instrument that defines his paternal family’s legacy.

“Look, I was famous at one time,” he told me. “I don’t need that anymore. It’s not about the money, it’s about getting good at my craft.

“I like uplifting people, putting smiles on faces,” he added as another passerby stopped, said a few kind words and plopped a bill into the case.

“There are times when I’m having a bad day, but then I see people smiling at my playing, and I start feeling good again. The better I am at that, the more purpose I feel in this life.”

I headed back to the office after walking across the street to sit down at a bus stop and just listen to his renditions of “Summertime,” “Play Misty for Me,” and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” mega hit.

I left with a smile on my face and an appreciation for the refreshing bond of humanity and connection, no matter the degree, one can find on a street corner of the Saintly City.