Thursday, May 22 – 9:30 am
PepsiCo Recital Hall
Master Class: Carl Saunders

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Jeff Helgesen, reporter

After a brief and glowing introduction from ITG president Vince DiMartino, trumpeter Carl Saunders’ master class began with a succinct disclaimer: “You can’t teach jazz.” With that having been said, Saunders began a seventy-minute demonstration on how he plays jazz, leaving the large crowd of attendees wanting more.

Saunders first spoke briefly about his approach to the horn; never having taken lessons, his early development was spent learning by listening to the music of his uncle, Bobby Sherwood, and the West Coast recordings of Don Fagerquist.

Saunders then proceeded to play Vernon Duke’s I Can’t Get Started as an improvised duet with the clinic’s piano player. After stating the melody, he improvised a chorus which left the audience buzzing, working his way throughout the entire range of the horn with tremendous fluidity.

He next addressed the topic of the big band trumpet section. As a veteran lead player, first in Las Vegas and later on the West Coast with the Bill Holman band (amongst others), Saunders lamented situations where the bandleader “stacked the section with heroes” (all lead players). He stated that, while a jazz trumpet improvisor is able to express himself artistically through his improvisations, lead trumpet players too often express themselves by hanging over after cutoffs, adding notes not written in the arrangement (often with questionable note choices), etc.

Saunder’s suggested instead that big band lead trumpet players express themselves by playing beautiful, warm music with good intonation. He also mentioned that the unsung hero is the fourth player who has his equipment set up to play fourth trumpet and puts his heart into it. Most “lead players” get bad sounds on fourth parts and don’t embrace the supporting role required of the fourth so that the lead sounds good.

Saunders next introduced his original composition You’re So Cute (which he turned into a humorous sing-along with the audience), a medium swinger with pleasant blowing changes. He then talked about his “Stepping Stones to the Changes,” in which he demonstrated using upper chord tones (7ths) and extensions (9ths and 13ths) to construct lines to give one’s solos a sense of direction. He said that these types of constructs should be practiced in all keys, in order to allow one’s fingers to “go on autopilot.” He also touched briefly on constructing chromatic scale exercises in a variety of rhythmic and cyclical treatments as an excellent way to develop finger flexibility. As if to demonstrate both of these concepts, he played Miles Davis’s up-tempo standard Four, pointing out areas in which he used harmonic sequences to advantage.

Saunders addressed the concept of “swinging,” asserting that its critical component is a steady beat, and talking about how players need to play a bit “on top” of the beat to maintain a good sense of swing. He implored serious jazz improvisers to get on the leading edge of the “cause and effect,” and take the role of making something happen (not waiting for a call from someone). After playing another of his compositions, Prudence, Saunders closed by saying that he hoped that big band lead trumpet players would “establish a softer base of operations (e.g., m.f.), never make the bandleader ask for less”.