Workshop Jazz-Trompete & Jazz-Komposition mit John Daversa

Jazz Improvisation and Composition Concepts 

John Daversa is a distinguished trumpet-player, composer, arranger, producer, bandleader and educator. He is also a multiple Grammy Award winner and nominee and the recipient of many other awards and honors. In addition to his active career as a performer and recording artist he is currently Professor and Chair of Studio Music and Jazz at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Daversa grew up in a musical household, where he passionately sang and played various instruments from a very young age, eventually picking up the trumpet. Throughout his childhood the family moved several times, residing in Oklahoma, Las Vegas, and Sacramento, and ultimately returned to Los Angeles where he attended Hamilton Academy of Music for his final two years of high school. While still a student he began writing for large and small jazz ensembles and performed regularly with his quartet, Second Generation. It was during this time that he began playing the Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI). As a member of the Monterey All-Star High School Big Band for four years, John toured Japan and performed with iconic guest artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, J. J. Johnson, and Clark Terry. Upon graduating high school, he was recognized with both the Herb Alpert Award and the Italian Heritage Award and soon began pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree at UCLA in music composition and performance. Throughout the 1990’s, Daversa continued to be recognized as one of the jazz world’s most promising young performers and composers, winning the National Trumpet Competition, the International Trumpet Guild Jazz Soloist Competition, and the David Joel Miller Award for Composition and Performance, and placing as a semi-finalist in the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Trumpet Competition. During this time he founded and led various ensembles including the Junk Wagon Trio, The D.a.M. Band, which released an album in 1994, and the John Daversa Progressive Big Band, founded in 1996, which recorded Live at Catalina’s in 2000.
From 2000 to 2003, Daversa toured Europe as the musical director for Holiday On Ice: In Concert, performing on trumpet, EVI, electric bass and spoken word. During the production’s summer hiatuses, he returned to the U.S., performing at the legendary Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri with renowned American crooners Andy Williams and Glen Campbell. In 2004 Daversa returned to Los Angeles with a focus on higher education, earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Jazz Studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 2006 and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Jazz Studies at University of Southern California in 2009, where he was recognized with the USC Jazz Studies Department Award. For the following two years he remained at USC as an adjunct instructor where he was nominated for the Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring. In 2011 he accepted a full-time position at California State University, Northridge. Under Daversa’s direction, the school’s Jazz “A” Band was named the winner of the Collegiate Division Best Large Jazz Ensemble at the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival, Best Collegiate Jazz Band in the Downbeat Awards, and placed first at the California Allegiance for Jazz State Championship. During this time, Daversa formed the John Daversa Small Band and re-established the John Daversa Progressive Big Band. Lively monthly residencies at local jazz venues such as the Baked Potato, the Blue Whale, and Seven Grand established the personnel and chemistry, not to mention an enthusiastic following, for both of these ensembles. The compositions created for these performances generated the material for Daversa’s next few albums, including Junk Wagon: The Big Band Album (2011) and Artful Joy (2012). Junk Wagon: The Big Band Album received several Global Music Awards, including Best in Show, Creativity/Originality and Album Production.