Ben Hewlett started in music at the age of ten in 1969 learning the trumpet. He went through the school system of exams and performances finally escaping the mandatory classical repertoire with the discovery of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. He was a minor third addict at fourteen and still has a passion for jazz and blues. A decade of 'no music' ended when Ben was 28. He started trumpet again. After endless screenings of the Blues Brothers film Ben was given a koch slide harmonica by girlfriend Pat who moved immediately and permanently to New Zealand when he started playing it. Not put off, he bought another in the key of E (following the music store's advice on the best harmonica for Blues - thank you so much! ) and resumed work on the minor thirds as well as doing extensive research into the origins of the songs recorded by the Blues Brothers Band. He found that he could easily(ish) do on the harmonica all the things he had been unsuccessfully trying to do on the trumpet. He came across some solo Sonny Terry recordings, was listening to lots of recorded blues, and going to see blues bands. One of the first was Paul Lamb's band which had a Tuesday night residency at a London Pub near where Ben lived and after a while he asked Paul Lamb for a lesson or two. Paul's main advice was to study Sonny Terry to get the rhythm and tone sorted out - fifteen years later he still studies Sonny Terry.
The next significant player Ben met was Brendan Power, perhaps the finest player in the UK . This happened in the early 90s through the National Harmonica League and resulted in Ben having more lessons with Brendan. Ben was now in a blues band (within a year of starting harmonica) doing pub gigs around London and did so for the next ten years until he left London for the West Country - home. Brendan asked Ben to babysit his harmonica evening class for a night and then for a term and then on a permanent basis so soon he was teaching five classes a week and had to go to college to learn how to teach music to group workshops. Thanks Brendan.
Two years later Ben had qualified Music Workshop Leader at Goldsmiths University of London, and was working full time in teaching music in different settings. For example working with disabled people using music technology for The Drake Music Project - and playing with Jools Holland by the way, working at day centers for adults with learning difficulties, the harmonica workshops, harmonica lessons in schools, and giving private lessons at home. He met Paul Lennon at one of the colleges where Paul was teaching 'Ear training'.
Since leaving London for his native Bristol , Ben has gone full time into teaching harmonica at schools. At that time he had fifteen schools a week to visit with over two hundred students - becoming by default the only full-time professional harmonica teacher in the UK . He was also running two harmonica evening classes one Blues Band workshop, had a large group of private students, and doing twenty Saturday 'learn to play in a day' courses all over the west of England. The 'chugging' idea was really spawned and developed as the very best way to get people started. It resulted from years of experimentation with different methods of introducing people to the harmonica - many thousands of people in fact. It has proven to be extremely popular and a very good way to have a successful foundation on an instrument. Even the great Larry Adler was impressed with Ben's aims (sort of)! - see course reviews.
After the idea of creating a backing track for people to play along with, Ben got together with Paul Lennon and came up with the ideas that have led to a fruitful and exciting partnership. Paul has amazing musical skills - he is able to play guitar, violin, bass, piano, keyboards and therefore anything through keyboards on the computer, all up to session and concert standard. He has been a professional teacher of all those instruments and more for over twenty years in the world of classical, jazz, and most other styles of music. He is also a composer of some note (geddit? - oh please yourself then) and happens to own a very well-equipped recording studio in Kent . With Paul's talents and Ben's drive and passion for teaching the harmonica they have broken new ground and come up with the first musically sensible method for learning the diatonic harmonica in a progressive way. Their production company is now known as Juicy Music.
Ben has recently recorded music using few other instruments such as bodhran, khaen, kubing, and darabuka. He also plays a mean didgeridoo - once in a BBC Radio 4 program which also featured Rolf Harris!
In 2000 Ben met up with the amazing Larry Adler and performed on the same bill as him at the Bournemouth International Centre. This prestigious venue hosted 'Harmonica 2000' put on by the International Harmonica Organisation where Ben was doing a 'Chugging' seminar.
Since then the ideas and products from Juicy Music are fairly pouring out with no end in sight!
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