John LaPorta

With BS (1956) and MME (1957) degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, John studied clarinet with William Dietrich, Joseph Gigliotti and Leon Russianoff. His composition teachers included Dr. Ernst Toch and Alexiis Haieff. He also studied jazz improvisation with Lennie Tristano.

John performed and/or recorded with the Woody Herman Orchestra, Charles Mingus, the Berklee Faculty Saxophone Quartet, the Herb Pomeroy Jazz Orchestra, Kenny Clark, Phil Wilson, Rusty Dedrick, Donald Byrd, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Ray Brown, Fats Navarro, Buddy Rich, Dizzie Gillespie, and others. In 1937-38 he performed with the American Youth Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowsky and Sylvan Levine. He was soloist for the Everest Recording of Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto” and for the New York Philharmonic premiere of Teo Macero’s “Fusion” with conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1957.

John’s illustrious career as a teacher includes 38 years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and 25 years at the National Stage Band Camps. He was a founding member of the National Association of Jazz Educators (now the International Association of Jazz Educators), and in 1987 received the first Dean of Faculty award for outstanding teaching at Berklee’s Fall Convocation in 1987. In 1994 he also received the Humanitarian Award at the 21st IAJE Conference in Boston.