Professional Jazz Trumpeter Bijon Watson is a Grammy winner and a musician on numerous Hollywood soundtracks, including Despicable Me and La La Land. He’s also performed with artists including Queen Latifa, Michael Bublé, and many more.
He visited Creek’s Jazz A and B bands on April 18.
Band director Tim Libby’s decades in the music performance and education industry have given him an extensive list of connections. He met Watson while performing with him in a Disneyland band in college.
During his visit, he critiqued individual musicians as well as the full bands. “I was extremely enthusiastic to come in and work with the jazz bands because I was in those students’ position myself at one time as a high school band member,” Watson said. “I am always excited to work with students that are willing to be humble and ask the right questions.”
Watson helped Jazz B trumpet sophomore Brooke Balogh by helping her be more confident and choosing the right notes on her improvised solo.
“It was just cool to listen to him talk in the language of jazz, on a whole other level,” Balogh said. “I’ve never used those notes in a solo before so he expanded my vocabulary. He definitely built my confidence a lot.”
Libby believes his clinics were instrumental in fine-tuning songs and solos. “It’s an invaluable experience to learn from somebody who’s a master of their craft,” he said. “It’s so inspiring to have somebody that’s so passionate about music…and it’s contagious.”
He has brought in teachers to help his classes before. “Anytime you get to be around somebody that’s that high level of an artist, it raises your artistry as well,” Libby said. “He’s talking about style, and he’s just getting everybody to play with a lot of energy and pay more attention to the details in the music.”
Balogh agrees that outside opinions and critiques can be very useful to young musicians.
“I think it’s really important because you get different perspectives,” she said. “Different people like to hear different things.”
Watson said that professionals will have some of the same struggles with their music as any high school student.
“It is always inspiring to be able to have an accomplished professional musician that has experienced similar struggles be able to share their process,” Watson said. “I can point to similar professional players that I met and heard growing up that inspired me early on, Doc Severinsen, Charlie Lewis, and Wynton Marsalis.”
Jazz B baritone saxophone freshman Eamon Holohan was also coached, alongside the saxophone line, with his solo. Watson taught him how to stray beyond the normal blues scale they had learned in class. “He taught us more complex, in-depth tools,” Holohan said.
Holohan noticed that Watson’s height and volume of speech made his trumpet sound more powerful, and himself a more credible source because of his confidence, especially when he was teaching about improvisation or solos.
“What he would do is…play what he was talking about as he was talking about it,” he said. “It just feels more authoritative coming from him.”
Watson remembers that he wasn’t a child prodigy; he gained his skill on the trumpet through hard work and practice. He hopes that his coaching can help them get encouraged to do the same.
“I hope that the students’ main takeaway was a phrase that I used many times while working with them: ‘consistency breeds confidence,’” he said. “That can be applied to anything in life that they wish to excel in and any goal they wish to attain.”
