About twenty musicians of Washington and beyond will take the stage Tuesday for a show revolving around one of the group’s founding members.

Titled “The Big Band Theory XIV,” this show will feature the large collective of musicians playing a set of big band music unrehearsed and on the spot. There will be several special guests taking part to celebrate drummer John Kessell, who grew up in Washington and notably was part of the 1972 high school jazz band that performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He has spent the rest of his life playing in ensembles, including “This Side Up” who played original compositions in the 1970s, and with several groups during time lived in Baltimore.

The Washington group’s first gig was in November of 2012, and as Kessell has battled stage four esophageal cancer in recent years, cofounder and guitarist Randy Swift says the group was eager to host a concert again, “Everybody loves playing with John. He’s very modest but he’s an exceptional musician. Not just as a drummer but a musician and elevates everybody around him. So I’ve talked to everybody in the band and without exception, they all wanted to get together as soon as we could make it work, at least one last time.”

Kessell says it’s a huge honor for the band to gather on his behalf, “I’m looking forward to it so much. The energy that you get from playing it’s like first take on a recording session. Every song in the concert is going to be a first take for us. There’s all kinds of extra energy that goes into that first take because you want to nail it. You want to get it right and you got everybody pulling together as a team. All of a sudden you’re in the moment and in the experience of it. There’s nothing like it.”

As always for the band, no admission is charged at the show, but since Kessell is immunocompromised they ask that all attendees please wear a face mask. The music starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Washington Area Performing Arts and Events Center at the high school.