Nathaniel Williford’s jazz education began when he entered the sixth grade at Osceola County School for the Arts in Kissimmee, FL. “The magic started happening at our instrument trial day,” he recalled, “selecting what we’d play in the band program. The trombone was what stood out to me. I could make some basic sounds on the trombone.”
Things began to change, however, when he heard Osceola’s top high school jazz band play. “I heard the lead trumpet sitting on top of the band. That was so cool. I kind of made up my mind without really knowing what I wanted to do.”
In the seventh grade, Williford continued to play the trombone, “but I started learning the trumpet a little bit at home. I would just follow along with the trumpet players (on recordings and videos) and see what corresponded to my slide positions. But I didn’t play trumpet at school for a very long time.”
In his freshman year of high school, he auditioned only on trumpet and started playing trumpet in the jazz band, but then Covid hit. Williford spent his entire sophomore year at home, but in the middle of his freshman year he had met his trumpet mentor, the late Dan Miller. “I was meeting with Dan Miller at least once a week on Zoom. He was a tremendous trumpet player and educator. He toured with Harry Connick, Jr.’s big band, but he moved to Florida a few years ago to take care of his aging parents. He was very influential in my instrumental development and connected me with other great trumpet teachers. He was just the best mentor, best friend.”
Williford was back at school for his junior year in 2021, and that’s when his budding career as a jazz trumpeter began to escalate. Osceola had a new Director of Jazz Studies, Jason Anderson. “He got us into shape pretty fast, gave us the right mindset, the right attitude.” Under Anderson’s leadership, the Osceola jazz band not only became a finalist at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition, it won First Place.
“We didn’t even have conversations about what would happen if we won,” Williford said. “Osceola had attended Essentially Ellington before, but that was before any of us were there. Nobody in the program had been there before. The first-place announcement was a huge surprise to us, but it was really, really awesome. And it would eventually play a big part in why I wanted to move to New York.” The 20-year-old Williford is now in his junior year at Juilliard.
The importance of Williford’s mentorship by Dan Miller was also driven home to him while competing at Essentially Ellington. “I got the chance to speak to (trumpeters) Kenny Rampton and Marcus Printup, and I let them know I was studying with Dan Miller, who used to play in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (predecessor of the JALC Orchestra). When I first met Wynton Marsalis and shook his hand for the first time, all he said to me was, ‘Dan Miller’. He didn’t say anything before that, anything after that. We gave each other a hug. Dan was still with us at that time, and I was able to call him up and tell him about the whole experience.”
Miller passed away in August 2022 at the age of 54. A resident of Fort Myers, FL, he helped organize the Naples Youth Orchestra and taught improvisation classes in the Jazz Studio of the University of Central Florida’s School of Performing Arts. Shortly after he died, a colleague, pianist Jerry Stawski, told the Naples Daily News, “Dan was an incredible educator. The kids loved him. He was a walking encyclopedia of jazz. You could play any record from any era, and he could tell you the tune, what musicians were playing on it, even what arrangement they were using.”
Jason Anderson vividly remembered his arrival at Osceola in the fall of 2021. “When I got the job as Director of Jazz Studies,” he said, “I reviewed the previous year’s concert videos and quickly realized that I would have a solid lead (trumpet) player — Nathaniel. I remember greeting him for the first time as ‘Nate the Great!’ I had no idea how great he really was, though. I quickly realized that, not only did he have a natural ability on the trumpet that many professionals spend years striving to achieve, but he was also an incredibly hard worker and an even greater leader — with a refreshing dose of humility, I might add. He was a constant source of inspiration to everyone in the program, and the example he set four to five years ago continues to leave a lasting impact on the next generation of jazz students here.” Osceola followed up its 2022 Essentially Ellington First Place with another First Place Award in 2023.
Anderson, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, has toured with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Illinois Jacquet Big Band and played saxophone with artists such as bassist Christian McBride, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, and pianist Cyrus Chestnut.
In the summers of 2022 and 2023, Williford was invited to be a member of Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz Ensemble, a program that selects about 22 high school students from across the country. Trumpeter Sean Jones, who is NYO’s Artistic Director, pointed out that, “Every now and then, a once in a generation talent appears. They tend to set a level of excellence that becomes the gold standard for their peers regarding their specific discipline or disciplines! Nathaniel is truly one of those voices in his generation.”
At Juilliard, Williford has “a lot of classmates that I did one or both programs (EE and NYO) with. In my class alone, there are five of us that I did NYO with.” He’s currently a member of JALC’s Future of Jazz Orchestra and, at the end of last month, he performed in a tribute to (pianist) Kenny Kirkland with trumpeter Etienne Charles’ Big Band at Dizzy’s Club. He’ll also be playing at Dizzy’s in December with drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr.’s Big Band, “and then we’re going into the studio to record an album.”
In March, he and three other Juilliard students spent a week in Havana, Cuba. “It was great,” he said. “The pianist in the group was William Schwartzman. It was his idea. We all attend Juilliard, but it wasn’t a Juilliard trip. William had a past relationship with the previous Ambassador to Cuba. We visited three different schools. We put on a few shows, and did some recording projects. The whole idea behind the trip was to go there and learn as much as we could about their music and show them as much as we could about our music. It was just such a rich experience. We met people at all levels — people still in school, people that are the local legends on the scene.” The other two Juilliard students on the trip were bassist Daniel Song and drummer Isaiah Bravo (an Osceola classmate).
The memory of that first lead trumpet performance when he was in sixth grade lingers with Williford. But he also pointed out that he might never have gotten to Osceola if not for a teacher at Kissimmee’s Koa Elementary School. In elementary school, he said, “I had played the recorder but didn’t know too much about actual instruments. I had a great teacher, Anielka Silva-Berrios. She advocated for me to go to Osceola.”
In New York, Williford said, “What I do primarily is work as a lead trumpet player. One of my favorite lead trumpet players of all time,” he added, “is Ryan Kisor of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He’s one of my big inspirations.” As for the people he grew up listening to, “There’s a short list. I’d say: Clifford Brown, Roy Hargrove, and Clark Terry.”-SANFORD JOSEPHSON