All that jazz: Gardner on glittering career
Derrick Gardner got hooked on music as a child. It worked out well for him. Since 1991 he has travelled the world playing trumpet with the Count Basie Orchestra. That same year he formed his own sextet, Derrick Gardner & the Jazz Prophets.
Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and George Benson are just some of the famous names he has performed with during his long career.
“My dad didn’t necessarily want me to go into music but my mom was supportive of anything I wanted to do,” said Mr Gardner, 49.
His mother was a classical pianist and organist. His dad played trumpet for Ray Charles’s band but quit after weighing up his options — he could stay at home with his family in Chicago and earn more money as a teacher than he could with the celebrated musician. He also knew that he could get tonnes of work playing with the acclaimed artists who regularly performed in Chicago, a centre for music.
“My mom started me out playing piano when I was about five years old,” Mr Gardner said. “Then I got bored. I kept hearing my dad practising jazz and playing all these records.
“When I was in fifth grade, my elementary school started a band programme. They asked if I was interested and if I was, what instrument did I want to play. My dad played the trumpet, so I said the trumpet — the rest is history, pretty much.”
His mother landed him the gig with the Count Basie Orchestra, he said.
She learned about the opportunity in her role as chairwoman of the music department at Hampton University. The Virginia institution was helping Count Basie Enterprises to archive its music. The timing was perfect for Mr Gardner. He was in the middle of graduate studies at Indiana University but was not happy with the way things were going.
Travelling the world to play music was a dream job — and it gave him the way out that he needed.
“It’s hardly the way that jobs are given to people,” he admitted. “She told me she learned about it through legendary tenor saxophonist Frank Foster, who was one of the key composers for the Count Basie Orchestra. He penned a lot of their big hits in the 1950s and ‘60s.”
Mr Gardner, who had no idea his mother knew such industry bigwigs, thought that she “was high on something”, but agreed to forward a cassette tape with a sample of his work. He got the job.
“My eyes were glittering the entire time,” he said.
“I hadn’t gone anywhere and in the first couple of weeks after [I was hired] I was playing on the Arsenio Hall Show. George Benson and Al Jarreau were performing with the band on that show.
“That summer, we were touring through Europe and Japan with George Benson. We’d tour for 260/270 dates each year — all over western and eastern Europe and Japan.”
A personal highlight was when they played in Bangkok, Thailand. The king played the saxophone and was a huge jazz fan.
“We even got to jam with him at his palace after the big music festival in his royal music room,” Mr Gardner said.
The trumpet player describes jazz as one of America’s “greatest musical exports”.
“It’s our early contribution to the world of music,” he said. “After that came the blues, rock and roll, R&B and everything else.”
Warwick Academy was home to the best of Bermuda Jazz at the weekend.
Noted American musicians Derrick Gardner and Albert Rivera flew to the Island in honour of the event, which culminated in a gala performance on Saturday night.
The pair played alongside the Warwick Academy Jazz Band and Bermuda musicians Toni Bari, Stan Gilbert and Ronnie Lopes.
They also shared their expertise — as a trumpeter and saxophonist respectively — at workshops for students from Warwick Academy and other schools.
It was a regular day’s work for Mr Gardner, an associate professor of trumpet in the University of Manitoba’s Jazz Studies Programme, who also plays with the Count Basie Orchestra.
“Through [the university programme] I go to high schools and colleges as a guest artist spreading the news about how to play music and it’s a recruit venture for me as well. I look for talented students [and encourage them to] look at our programme in Canada to come and study,” he explained.
He was in Bermuda last year, also for Warwick Academy’s gala jazz weekend, Mr Gardner added.
Then and now he was impressed with what he saw.
“They’re very talented kids, very bright, very intelligent and have great interest and enthusiasm for the music. They have a lot of questions about how to execute things musically but once they realise what it is, it’s [great].
“Jazz is like one of those foods that takes on the flavour of whatever you add to it; it takes on the flavour of that area. It gives the music a different sound. It’s refreshing. I’m anxious to see someone from Bermuda take it to another level.”
