Students Learn from Masters at Vail Jazz Workshop

By Paul de Barros I Feb. 7, 2020

Bassist John Clayton (left) has helmed the Vail Jazz Workshop since its inception in 1996.
(Photo: Jack Affleck)

“It was really hard at the beginning,” said 2017 alum Ben Feldman, a bassist who now attends the Manhattan School of Music and recently toured with Dutch singer Lizzy Ossevoort. “It almost broke us down. But the Vail workshop really made me up my musical game. The teachers there made much higher demands and were so serious about the music in a way other camps weren’t. They really made us perform at our highest levels.”

Indeed, Clayton has a sly way of extracting a level of playing from students that they didn’t know they were capable of.

“We do our best to eliminate the word ‘difficult,’” he said. “That would just cloud their progress. We just say, OK, here’s what’s gotta happen, let’s do this. Then, they’re all on board: You’re their teacher, you told them to do something, they’re going to assume that it’s possible to do that. But in the back of our minds, we’re thinking, ‘Let’s make sure we don’t tell them this is really difficult.’”

When it comes to inspiration, the view of the Rocky Mountains doesn’t hurt. From the Vail town square, where outdoor performances take place in a tent, attendees can breathe in fresh air and look into the distance to see bike trails and ski slopes against a powder-blue sky.

“You have an all-star band at your disposal, and outside your window you see those mountains,” Francies said after one of his performance in 2017.

Dick Oatts—the veteran alto saxophonist and artistic director of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra—came on board a few years ago (after Clayton’s brother Jeff left the faculty). “John has been an inspiration,” Oatts said. “To watch how he gets the students to come together over a short period of a few days—it’s just remarkable what they take in and what they retain. It’s made a huge impact on the jazz scene.”

A lot has changed since 1996, when Stone and Clayton first got started. Thanks to the internet, students have far more access to information than they did 25 years ago. That, and the burgeoning quality of jazz band programs around the country, means students are coming in at a much higher level.

“Every year,” Clayton said, “after we hear them play those first couple of songs together, we inevitably pow-wow and say the same thing: ‘Oh, my God. What are we going to teach them?’ We’re always shocked. They blow us away with their seeming maturity—and it is mature playing. But then we ask them if they’ve heard of Gene Ammons. ‘No.’ And then that clarifies it for us, ‘Oh, OK, let me tell you about this ... . That really makes it easier for us.”

For the students, a week in Vail might wind up being about more than learning new licks or new recordings. It can be life-changing. When Calvaire attended, his hosts for the week were Stone and his wife, Cathy.

“They are beautiful people to be around,” Calvaire asserted. “They helped me become the man I am.” DB