Some of the nation’s top trumpet players are in Wilmington this week for the inaugural Clifford Brown Jazz Trumpet Consortium.
Named in honor of jazz great and Wilmington native Clifford Brown, the workshop is the brainchild of professional trumpet player Al Hood, who has worked with artists such as Ray Charles and Wynton Marsalis.
Participating musicians will receive daily intensive training and learn more about Clifford Brown who died in a car accident at the age of 25.
Before his death in 1956, Brown was the biggest rising star in jazz.
Al Hood says the musician’s legacy runs deep.
“His phrases were so logical they were so fresh and they also had quite an impact of emotion to them so when you combine all those things together it’s sort of a rarified thing in a musician and there’s only a few that really attain that,” he says. “We need to capture that in more our young players today.”
The Consortium will perform at the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival Tuesday, June 16 and in a free public performance Thursday, June 18 at the Christina Cultural Arts Center in Wilmington.
This piece is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.