Today, Champian Fulton shares with us her experience playing at the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. Champian has a spellbinding voice and plays with only the best jazz players. She graduated from SUNY Purchase with a Bachelor of Music Degree in May of 2006 and currently resides in NYC, performing with her trio, Fukushi Tainaka and Neal Miner.
Listen to Day In, Day Out off of Champian’s latest release, the breeze and I, while you read her great story.
Day In, Day Out on The Breeze and I
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The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival
I like to say that I provide “Jazz for all Occasions” and, in keeping with that sentiment, I work all different types of gigs from concerts, dances, weddings, summer Jazz camps, fashion shows, festivals – really anything! I am thankful every time I get to swing with my band and I believe there is a good time to be had, or a valuable lesson to be learned, from every gig. Some gigs are more work than others, some gigs are more work than they’re worth, and then, on very rare occasions, gigs are just FUN. Since self-releasing my new album “the breeze and I” in March of this year, I have been really pounding the (oftentimes virtual) pavement in search of higher visibility gigs, including the ever elusive summer Jazz festival. When you’re just getting started, like me, it can sometimes feel that these higher visibility venues really are about who you know (or who your manager knows), but being a one-woman-new-to-the-business show, I don’t know anybody! So you can imagine my surprise when the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival came knocking on my door.
I had submitted my previous album “Sometimes I’m Happy” for review in Keyboard magazine and amazingly, thanks to Jon Regen, had received a very kind review in their January 2010 issue. Howard Fulton, the production manager for the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival in Wilmington DE, had read the review and became intrigued by our shared last name. He visited my website, liked what he heard, and then called me to offer me the opportunity to play the festival! I was thrilled because not only was the festival one of the largest and oldest completely free festival honoring my hero Clifford Brown, but Howard was a genuinely nice person over the phone. I couldn’t believe my luck in being offered a slot on the festival, and even more than that, I couldn’t believe it all came about because of my last name (by the way, it turns out Howard and I are not related).
Lining up the logistics for the festival (transportation, etc) turned out to be just as easy and simple. Everything fell into place. I was thrilled my drummer Fukushi Tainaka and bassist Hide Tanaka were available and, even better, it was arranged that my father, flugelist Stephen Fulton, would fly into NY from OK and join us.
Once we arrived in Wilmington the fun truly started. The festival is held downtown and the stage area, with the lawn before it, is very impressive. Sound check was easy as pie (I was thrilled with the beautiful piano and excited that there was a huge television screen suspended above the bandstand that would broadcast the performance so the audience could see us “up close”) and when we kicked off our set at 6:30, the time just flew by. The audience was so warm and responsive that I felt right at home.
Champian Fulton Quartet at the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival
When our set was over and John Pizzarelli started with his Swing 7, my father and I walked around the crowd and mingled. I was amazed by the people I met; one couple had flown in from Brazil for the week, and another had driven down from Brooklyn just for Tuesday! In today’s musical climate, it warmed my heart to see people planning their summer vacation around a Jazz festival.
It is such a rare thing for a gig to be 100% fun right from the get-go, but I can honestly say, I never enjoyed myself on a gig so much as I did at the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. You never know when a wonderful opportunity is going to fall in your lap.
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Champian Fulton
www.champian.net
Connect with Champian on Facebook
Buy “the breeze and I” on CD Baby
This is my first CD review for earbits. I had to choose from over 40 great albums that have quickly piled up on my desk. It is amazing how many great “undiscovered” artists are out there and it’s our mission at earbits to connect these high quality artists with their target audience.
