“It’s also given me a chance to stretch the band out.We do 56 shows in 28 days, and we always come out of this a much stronger unit all around.” A jazz-pop powerhouse who keeps a grueling tour schedule — he’s on the road some 280 nights out of the year — Mr.

Mount Hood's program was headed by Larry Mc Vey, whose band had come to be a proving ground and regular stop for Stan Kenton and Mel Tormé when they were looking for new players.

In 1981, he was selected as a member of Mc Donald's All American High School Jazz band which marked his first Carnegie Hall performance.

At the age of 17, he ended up at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, by convincing his high school to allow him to fulfill his remaining senior year credits there.

He’s one of the most famous violinists in the world — but when Joshua Bell fiddled incognito in a Washington Metro station, he barely cleared . “Ah, I don’t know,” the 46-year-old Grammy winner says now, seven years later.

“New York has some wonderful places where people play and have audiences. “I still remember walking out on that stage at 17, in awe…One of my last memories of Paul Newman was of him coming to one of my concerts there.