Johnny Matt was 8 years old and called John Matrachisia when he talked his parents into buying him his first trumpet, the instrument he just had to have.

"I loved that trumpet so much I couldn't put it down," says the Rochester native who lives in Webster. "I went to sleep with it beside my bed."

Johnny is 71 now and he's still got a trumpet in his hand, a song in his heart. His band, sometimes small, sometimes big, plays everywhere in and around Rochester — weddings, benefits, other occasions. The band usually opens with the Glenn Miller theme song, "Moonlight Serenade," and then glides through the classics, "Fly Me to the Moon," "It Had to be You," "In the Mood," "Mood Indigo," on and on, back in time. And as they play, people, some old, some younger, get up and swing dance, touching and not touching, circling, swaying, alive.

On Wednesday, Johnny and his band were the stars of the Seniorsfirst MusicFest on the lawn at Valley Manor, an independent and assisted living community on East Avenue in Rochester. They did two hours on a warm day, never seeming to sweat because they're pros; they have done this before and before and before.

Like Johnny, who was a liquor salesman for 18 years and before that a draftsman in an engineering department, the band members had or have day jobs: teachers, doctors, lawyers, other lines of work. They stress that they like working with and for Johnny.

"He doesn't put a lot of pressure on us, and it turns out well," says Val Anzalone, who directed the band at Pittsford Sutherland High School for years.

"Johnny's a great talent," says the vocalist Jack Civilletto, who's from the Buffalo area and sounds more like Sinatra than Sinatra. "He's got class."

Johnny has been leading bands since he was in ninth grade at East High.

"I was making money," says Johnny, who studied at the Eastman School of Music Preparatory Department while he was in high school. "I didn't have to have a paper route. I had a band."

The band he had was the Johnny Matt Band, as he and his buddies decided that a John Matrachisia Band would be tough to pronounce, tough to remember. As time went on, the band membership would change, but Johnny would always be there, trumpet in hand, leading the way. They could do 150 gigs a year, easy. The band had to downsize after rock and roll came on the scene in the 1950s. But Johnny held on. Now that swing music is back, he's got a lot of work and sees no reason to stop playing.

Though certainly, he has other interests. Johnny has three sons, eight grandchildren. He's a born-again Christian, and he and his wife, Barbara, are active in two churches. They also raise money for the American Heart Association, their special charity. Barbara handles business arrangements for the band and plays some percussion. At the MusicFest, she did back-up when Johnny sang the Louis Prima standard "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody." Johnny doesn't sing that much, but he's got a voice to kill for. Like everything else about him, it's cool, relaxed. Think Dean Martin but sober. Think sexy as well. Johnny's got his hair, his health. He and his band have fans, female fans. But it's not just the man, the women say, it's the music.

"It's from a era of love and separation and reuniting with loved ones," says Cathy Weiss of Martha's Vineyard, Mass., who was at the concert with her mother, Sissy Weiss of Brighton.

It's nostalgia, too, the women add, memories of gentler times. Whatever it is, it works on a warm, breezy summer day on East Avenue in Rochester, as Johnny Matt and his band get everyone in the mood for love.