Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jon Faddis was born July 24, 1953 in Oakland, California and studied music and trumpet as a child. At 18, he joined Lionel Hampton’s big band followed with tenure in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra as lead trumpet. After playing with Charles Mingus, he became a noted studio musician in New York, appearing on many pop recordings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The mid-Eighties saw Jon leaving the studios to pursue his solo career, which resulted in albums like Legacy, Into The Faddisphere and Hornucopia. Becoming the director and main trumpet soloist of the Dizzy Gillespie 70th Birthday Big Band and Dizzy’s United Nation Orchestra, in 1992 he began leading the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band at Carnegie Hall, conducting over 40 concerts in ten years.

Faddis has led the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars and the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars Big Band, was appointed artistic director of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, heads the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York. As an educator he teaches at The Conservatory of Music at Purchase College-SUNY and is a guest lecturer at Columbia College Chicago.

A jazz trumpeter, conductor, composer, and educator renowned for both his highly virtuosic command of the instrument and for his expertise in the field of music education, trumpeter Jon Faddis also leads master classes, clinics and workshops around the world often bringing promising students along to his gigs to sit in, and has produced a number of CDs for up-and-coming musicians.

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