John D'earth

D'earth appeared regularly with his vocalist wife Dawn Thompson, who died August 31, 2017 after surviving nine years with brain cancer. She was born in Alexandria, Virginia on October 9, 1946.

One day Mussulli sat a young D'earth next to him and called a friend and simply said, "Listen." He and D'earth began improvising on the Charlie Parker be-pop classic "Confirmation". When done, Mussulli picked the receiver and said, "Fourteen" — then hung up. That experience changed D'earth's life, confirming his musical gift. As a teenager DownBeat said of his performance at the Newport Jazz Festival that he played "like a young Freddie Hubbard."

D'earth attended Harvard University briefly only to drop out and pursue his musical career. In his early years he played in Bob Moses' innovative bands. He co-founded the group Cosmology (Vanguard Records) with bandmates drummer Robert Jospe and singer Dawn Thompson — whom D'earth later married. Jospé, D'earth, and Thompson, whom he met in New York, came to Charlottesville in 1981 for a summer and have all lived there ever since. Before heading for The Big Apple, Thompson had helped found the famed Prism Coffeehouse musical venue in Charlottesville.

D'earth is the Director of Jazz Performance at the University of Virginia as well as the artist in residence at Virginia Commonwealth University. D`earth was music teacher at The Tandem School in Charlottesville from the early- to mid-1980s. He influenced many of his students while also teaching them to step out of their comfort zones and experience many musical styles they wouldn't have otherwise.

D'earth met Robert Jospé, a jazz drummer who would later relocate to Charlottesville and become a UVA music instructor, in 1967 at The Cambridge School of Weston, a preparatory high school near Boston. They started a group named Fire and Ice, and "began a collaboration that continues today."

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five were D'earth's favorite band, but he also appreciated classical music. Jazz instruction wasn't so easy to find in the early 1960s, but D'earth crossed paths with Henry "Boots" Mussulli, who was a veteran of the big band days.

John D'earth (born March 30, 1950) is an American post bop/hard bop jazz trumpeter born in Framingham, Massachusetts who has appeared on recordings by Dave Matthews and Bruce Hornsby as well as recording a number of CDs on his own. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

John Edward Dearth II was born in 1950 in Framingham, Massachusetts, growing up in nearby Holliston. His father had survived the Pacific theater of World War II and was "obsessed" with jazz. As D'earth says, "He was a maniac for music and for jazz music. He was my first teacher. He revealed to me mysteries of art and music that are priceless."

The Dearth family lived in a house from the 1690s that had been The Littlefield Tavern during the Colonial era. D'earth's parents divorced when he was eight, around the time he got his first trumpet. He immediately walked out into the yard and played it to the trees, discovering scales on his own.