NickD

Well, I just heard the Wayne Bergeron Master Class at New Trier High School. As a NTHS Band Parent, I'm his driver to and from the hotel this evening.

He was handed a tough gig - a clinic in 40 minutes! He did a terrific job, though. His nuts and bolts stuff was right in line with many of the ideas we all know - paying homage to Maggiao and Shew. However, what was particularly interesting were his comments about his experiences as a free-lancer who was also confident enough and caring enough to continue studying - sometimes with his professional peers. For example, Wayne is a screaming lead player, but he took some lessons with Malcolm McNabb to work on his legit sound and attack. Man, I thought that took guts on Bergeron's part! I really respect him for having the courage to do this. He was also very forthcoming about some of his failures in the studio. I was also impressed with his courage to discuss this. Certainly we were all well versed with his success stories.

I felt that the kids had a chance to learn a lot about the biz from his short talk if they were alert. I know I did!

If you ever get a chance to hear Bergeron lecture, do it. He is a very engaging fellow and a fine musician.

Nick Drozdoff

NickD

Well, the Bergeron performance last night was wonderful. I had a lot of students there, of course (physics AND trumpet students - yes I am taking trumpet students again). Sitting with my wife and me in the audience were Phil Feo, the owner/contractor of Royal Trumpet Works and Jared Brame, an incredible high note trumpet artist from the Chicago area. Wayne displayed great grace and taste. My wife commented that it wasn't just a high note festival. He played several gorgeous ballads that didn't get out of the staff and handled them deftly.

The hang after the gig was delightful. Present were myself, NTHS trumpet instructor and assistant director, Bruce Daughtery, Dan Gossling (the gentleman who is marketing ChopSaver - he gave me a sample - GREAT STUFF - TM Advertiser - I WILL be buying more!!!), Wes Bullock (the founder and original director/producer of Blast!). Also present were about 8 students from U of I. It was a terrific trumpet geek hang, trading war stories from our days on the road with Mayanrd and hearing of all the neat things going on with Wayne in LA.

It is no small wonder why Wayne is in such demand for the concerts.

Well, that's it for today!

Peace, all!

Nick Drozdoff

BergeronWannabe

I was fortunate enough to meet him at a concert he did locally last year. I was so star struck (some punk kid meeting an icon) I could barely speak. He was so cool to me and all my classmates, gave us alot of good info.
He's one of my idols and for lead playing and jazz soloing, he's got it going on! Happy to hear about a legit lesson, because I think the important point here is that it's about trumpet playing- not classical, jazz, lead, etc. I like to practice all around playing as much as I can, takes alot of time but some day (hopefully) I'll be ready for any gig.
Peace,
-Andrew

NickD

I just posted a picture of Wayne and me at both of my websites. You can view the slide show on my Myspace site or go to the gallery of my mp3unsigned.com site. The links are below.

FWIIW, just a litle dumb fun and some validation on my part! It was a fun hang after the gig.

Nick

Bear

Heck Nick,
How about sharing some of the knowledge that Mr. B presented in those Masterclasses? What stories did he tell about his studio failures? Knowing that he is fallible (joke) and still rebounded could really help some others going through some problems right now.

NickD

Well, Bear, let's see if I can get this right.

Wayne told a story to the kids about a session on which he was sitting between Malcolm Mcnabb and John Lewis. It was a legit session and Wayne was designated the principle player. There was one hugley exposed section where he had to come in ppp on a G on top of the staff. He said he'd rather come in fff on high A instead of this. Well, he cuffed it several times and ended up passing the part to one of the legit hotshots who nailed it.

Wayne said it was the most embarassing moment of his life and decided to get some lessons with McNabb in order to straighten things out.

McNabb told him he was setting up for fff - big open aperture and tyrying to play softly on it. Instead, McNabb used a smaller aperture and much less air to play delicately - no big wedge thing going on. In short, it was a different style of playing from what Wayne was used to using. Bergeron has since mastered the ability to cross over. It was a very interestin discussion.

Bergeron also emphasized the use of the methods of Shew and Maggio, including the wedge and pucker set.

If more ideas come back to me, I'll share. The class was only 40 minutes and when I was hanging with him, I was bugging him about the biz more than the playing.

TTFN
ND/&out

Bear

Thxs man,
That's kewl. It'd be really neat just to sit and hang/talk with artists but I am not too social... Not that I don't try to be, just don't really know what to talk about... "How's the weather?" HA. Anyways, I get to crossover a lot from Symph to Quintet to jazz/rock lead to etc. For the longest time I always thought you should play the same in every situation... Then one day I was reading some books/interveiws and noticed that all the "bigs" said the same thing, even though they said it in there own individual way. It really is true that there is no "special one way fits all" method of playing.
Tell us some about the discussion about the biz side of things? How do you get the chance to show what you got? etc. I really would love to play for a living... instead of saying "would you like fries with that". HA.

Tim