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Nate Petersen

About Me

My Jazz Story

After being offered the opportunity to double on tenor trombone for middle school jazz band in 8th grade, my soon-to-be high school band director, David Martin, offered to teach me bass trombone in high school. In addition to playing tuba, I soon picked up bass trombone and it became my primary instrument a year later. Martin taught me all of the fundamentals, including how to play jazz music. Our top high school jazz band, University High School (Orange City) JE1, went to the Essentially Ellington competition in 2016, where I got to play on bass trombone. What an experience! The next year, we performed at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago. I continued to work on improvisation and transcriptions. I then began doing FMEA All-State Jazz band in 2018 and 2019. During my senior year in 2019, I auditioned for the BOA Jazz Band of America and NYO-USA/NYO Jazz—winning all of the above auditions. I am extremely grateful for these opportunities, as I was able to meet so many talented musicians from around the country (I opted to do the NYO-USA orchestra since I had already done JBOA, and had to choose between which group I’d tour with!). For college, I’ve been studying with Professor Tom Brantley for my undergrad in trombone performance, doubling on tenor/bass trombone, classical and jazz. Although jazz music was not my first love, it has become one of my favorite things to play, and I’m thankful I was exposed to it through my music teachers. I am now finishing my undergrad at USF, performing in USF’s Jazz Ensemble 1 and Prof. Brantley’s jazz trombone “Bone Band”!