Arni Cheatham is well known on the Boston music scene as a saxophonist, bandleader, and teacher. He was a founding board member of the Jazz Coalition back in the Seventies and the mastermind behind Jazz Ed, a music program in Boston's public schools during desegregation-one of several youth programs Arni initiated or has been involved with. He's been an anchor of the avant-garde Aardvark Jazz Orchestra for forty plus years, and, more recently, another big band, the Makanda Project. Arni was honored as a Jazz Hero during Jazz Week 2013. He celebrates his 70th birthday today.

Trombone was Arni Cheatham's instrument back in the Parker High School band in Chicago. But he knew a young man named Lester who played alto sax and was really good. One day when Lester went to "grab some lunch," Arni asked if he could borrow his horn. "The die was cast," says Arni. He went home that day and asked his mother to take him to a music store to buy a saxophone. She warned him about the payments, but it didn't matter. He bought a tenor sax, and, not long after, he was playing his first gig.

After high school, Arni attended the Chicago Teachers College part-time and worked until he was drafted-the news about Canada didn't reach him, he says. After a battery of tests, he was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, to be a cook.

Arni hated the military. "Nothing made sense." He encountered a type of racism he hadn't known in Chicago: the "n" word out of the mouth of a fellow soldier while they cut up chickens. The guy was, Arni admits, "a few sandwiches short of a picnic," but still it was a shock to be addressed that way. Then there was the waitress in town who refused to take his order.

Sprung from the Army, Arni came to Boston in 1969-"as good a place as any." Berklee School of Music was a draw, and he spent a semester and a half there while familiarizing himself with Boston's music scene.

When he moved into the Piano Factory in the mid-Seventies, the owners were looking for artists and musicians-"people like me." His first apartment faced the courtyard and the bathroom had a window-a far cry from the pit he'd lived in up on Comm. Ave. Thirty-five years later, he says it's still a good place to live although not as easy as it used to be. To attract a market rate crowd, not necessarily artists, the owners are putting in glass bathroom doors-bathroom windows are passé. Oddly enough, the building is not soundproof, so Arni makes it a point to introduce himself to new people on his hall so they know he'll be practicing, although never past 9.

Arni is also a freelance photographer and writer. He prints his own photographs. "Photography is my meditation," he says, "music is my public art." Although he shoots landscapes, urban scenes, and people, he's fascinated with birds and the challenges of photographing them. And he writes about them. Of a Green Heron for example: "this dapper chap reminds me of an English gentleman. The breast resembles a brown pinstripe shirt. The mantle seems to be a subtle Herringbone...Tres Elegant." North Truro is one of his favorite spots for bird photography.

In 2011, he published What Makes Me Click!, a small book he calls "A partial answer to the question, "What are you taking pictures of?"

He did all this while working for a Boston consulting group, a 21-year job he left in 2009 just prior to a second bout of cancer.

Arni was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in August 2003 and diagnosed again in 2010 with a spot in the lung. Says Arni, "It makes you aware that every minute of every day is precious. What's important is I woke up this morning; everything else is just details." Radiation and chemo didn't keep him from giving concerts as soon as he could. His doctor, a jazz fan, told him, "I'm not betting against you!"

His bookshelf holds an eclectic mix of books: Miles Davis, Langston Hughes, the psychology of music, Isaac Asimov, Zen Buddhism, the Yoga of Sound, three or four versions of the Bible, Stephen King, and Hunter Thompson.

He's enamored of Hunter Thompson's perspective: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'"

Alison Barnet is the author of the recently-published South End Character, Speaking Out on Neighborhood Change, which can be purchased for $10 at the South End Branch Library and at the South End Food Emporium, 465 Columbus Ave. Both do it for the neighborhood and make no profit from the book.