International Trumpet Guild Journal: February 28, 2002

ITG News: Clodfelter to University of Kentucky

Mark Clodfelter has recently been appointed Assistant Professor of Trumpet at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, effective August 1, 2002. Clodfelter has been the Instructor of Trumpet at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, North Carolina for the past 6 years. Prior to this appointment he performed with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and freelanced throughout the southeast. He is a founding member of the Giannini Brass and his teachers have included Ray Mase, James Thompson, and Don Eagle.

Mark is a Yamaha Performing Artist and is currently Principal Trumpet with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director and Conductor of the Smoky Mountain Brass Band in Asheville, NC.

Source: Bradley Ulrich

By RACHEL LEONARD

The Dispatch

June 6, 2002

By the time Mark Clodfelter was a ninth-grader at North Davidson Junior High School, he would skip his classes to teach band class on days when his band director was absent. Clodfelter, now an instructor of trumpet and jazz band at North Carolina’s Mars Hill College, still loves to teach music. In July, he moves to Lexington, Ky., to take the prestigious job as trumpet professor at the University of Kentucky. Clodfelter said he only hopes the barbecue is as good there as it is in Lexington, N.C.

Music has always been Clodfelter’s first love in life. He learned to read music around the same time he learned to read English, he said. “I started playing little instruments around the house when I was 3 years old.”

Born in Winston-Salem, Clodfelter moved to nearby Lexington when he was in the fourth grade. He began playing trumpet in seventh grade at North Davidson Junior High School (now North Davidson Middle School) under the direction of band director John Olsen. Clodfelter knew he wanted to play a brass instrument, but at the time he wasn’t sure which one. “I couldn’t decide between trumpet and trombone. I figured the trumpet would be easier to carry on the bus,” Clodfelter said jokingly. “I’ve never regretted that decision. I’ve also never had any trouble getting a seat.”

Olsen, who has since retired from teaching music, still remembers Clodfelter. “He was always a good student,” he said. “He was a leader." Clodfelter would fill in for students and play instruments other than the trumpet when Olsen needed him to, Olsen remembered. “He was always willing to help the band program.” Olsen called Clodfelter’s new trumpet professorship at the University of Kentucky a “major position. That position has been held by some extremely fine trumpet players,” he said. “He’s gone a long way.”

Clodfelter’s résumé is impressive: he’s performed with orchestras across the state, including the Greensboro Symphony, the Winston-Salem Symphony and the North Carolina Symphony. He has put out numerous albums, toured the continental United States and Western Europe and performed with musicians such as Ray Charles, The Moody Blues and Manhattan Steamroller.

One of his most memorable experiences, he said, was playing with the Grammy award-winning trumpeter Doc Severinsen, whose music he grew up listening to. “When I played behind Doc Severinsen, it was playing behind a childhood hero,” he said.

Since 1990, Clodfelter has also played with a brass group he co-founded with Greensboro College tuba instructor David Nicholson. The group, “Giannini Brass,” has toured all over the southeastern United States.

Aside from being a great all-around performer, Nicholson said, Clodfelter is a true teacher. “I’ve seen him work with everyone from elementary school children in groups all the way up through adults,” he said. “He can teach you something, and you don’t even realize you’re being taught anything.”

Clodfelter doesn’t work only with professional musicians. He created the “Science of Sound” program, in which musicians visit schoolchildren to teach them the physics behind music. Clodfelter also teaches at high school band clinics statewide, has worked with students at Ledford High School and has instructed the Davidson County All-County Band. “I had All-County Band on that same stage,” he said. Clodfelter chose some of the same pieces of music when he taught at the All-County Band clinic that he himself played in as a teen-ager.

Moving to Kentucky, Clodfelter said, is the next logical move in his career. The University of Kentucky at Lexington is not only much larger than Mars Hill, but also public, which allows more students to attend. At the same time, there are more artistic outlets in the area, he said. “There are endless possibilities for my personal artistic endeavors.”

But Clodfelter doesn’t plan to stay put in Kentucky. He’s already planning a tour of China for sometime next year.

And, of course, he’ll spend plenty of time teaching. “One of the highest callings of any artist is educating,” he said. Teaching, to him, is crucial to pass on musical knowledge from one generation to the next.

For Clodfelter, it all comes naturally. “I’ve never done anything but music,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.”

Rachel Leonard can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 236, or at rachel.leonard@the-dispatch.com.

Copyright @2002 The Lexington Dispatch