Division of Jazz Studies | College of Music

In an article by Anita Brown in the July 2011 JazzTimes that asks prominent lead players for suggestions for students, Tony Kadleck says this about Jay Saunders's lead trumpet masterclass:

"There's a great class at North Texas that Jay Saunders teaches: a Lead Trumpet class. It's amazing. Last year they studied several players: Wayne Bergeron, Craig Johnson, myself, and some others. Jay asked us to send him some mp3s of some things that we thought would be worthwhile to check out. The students study each lead player. He encourages them to listen critically, asking "What are they doing? What do you notice about the time, the feel, the vibrato?" They examine as much as possible from recordings and he makes them think about it. He also has them transcribe lead parts without making the charts available to them. He gets it and he's training these kids to pick apart this stuff, which is great. It's exactly what you need to be doing: emulating good players."