Over two decades, Litchfield Jazz Camp has had its share of precocious students.  Quite a few of them, actually.  Most fall into a category I like to call to “my little old men.” They are atypically young boys (our official bottom age is 12) with high intelligence and talent and great communication skills. Some are prodigies; just a few are outright geniuses.

Two such students from the past several years have won the Downbeat  Music Awards for Junior High School soloists—pianist/composer Estaban Castro who came to us at 9, and tenor saxophonist Ian Munoz who has attended LJC since 2015 when he was 13. We discovered Ian through a competition sponsored by our partnership with Miami radio station WDNA.

This year’s featured young talent comes to us also from Miami. His name is Brandon Goldberg.  Brandon joined us last year at age 10.  He will attend the last week of Litchfield Jazz Camp and play at the Litchfield Jazz Festival on August 6 as a special guest of the Litchfield Jazz Orchestra under the baton of pianist/arranger Jen Allen.

Not only is Brandon an extraordinary musician, he is a remarkably wise and articulate boy. This is a boy who went to the piano at age three and watched his fingers play melodies he did not know he could.

Check Brandon out in the YouTube videos here.  One shows him as a recent guest of Monty Alexander at Jazz At Lincoln Center, another with Steve Harvey on the NBC show Little Bigshots, and most recently on the Harry Connick, Jr program. Last but not least watch him give a TED talk!

I know we’ll all be watching Brandon’s growth and development with great pleasure. I also think we’ll flock to see him play on other stages in the not-too-far-distant future.

VWM