Freelance Trumpet Player John Chudoba grew up in the suburbs of Chicago where he began playing the trumpet in grade school. John states that Conrad Gozzo and Snooky Young have been tremendous influences on his playing career. John Chudoba studied the trumpet with William Scarlet who was the Assistant Principle Trumpet with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while living in Chicago and attending high school.

John attended DePaul University from 1986 through 1988 in Chicago for two years before heading to California to play with the various Disneyland Bands for the next six years. While attending DePaul University, John studied trumpet with Ross Beacraft of the Chicago Brass Quintet.

John moved out to California to play at Disneyland and attended California State University located at Northridge from 1988 through 1990. While attending California State University, John was fortunate to have studied trumpet with studio trumpet legend Jerry Hey. John states that Jerry took him under his wing and helped him tremendously. Jerry shared several Bill Adams routines that John has used successfully.

Freelance Trumpet Player John Chudoba played lead trumpet with the Woody Herman Orchestra from 1989 through about 2003 while the band was still out touring a lot. I had the privilege of hearing John play with the Frank Tiberi led band here in Columbus, Ohio in the summer of 2002 and John's lead playing was absolutely spot on ... awesome! The band (as usual) cooked with plenty of outstanding soloist. John was a delight to talk with and shared at the time that he was playing a 1s2 Calicchio trumpet and a Monette Prana (LT) BL6 mouthpiece. John obviously has a lot of fun when he plays as was evident that evening at the Firehouse gig. John was very gracious and enthusiastic with every single person who wanted to talk with him regarding his tremendous performance, equipment etc . John participated in a Tribute Concert out in Los Angeles for Maynard Ferguson a couple of years ago where he was able to perform "Gospel John" for The Boss. John's playing of Gospel John was one of the strongest showings I have viewed.

John is currently lead trumpet with Broadway's "West Side Story" orchestra.

Freelance Trumpet Player John Chudoba has performed extensively with the Woody Herman Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson's Big Bop Nouveau Band; Paul Anka; Gary Morgan's Pan Americana Big Band; The Fab Faux; the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Big Band of Chicago, Barrett Deems Big Band, Bill Watrous Islands West Big Band, Jack Sheldon's Big Band and with numerous Broadway Shows including A Chorus Line; Miss Saigon National Tour, Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life, Monty Pythons Spamalot, Never Gonna Dance, His Way: A Tribute to the Man and His Music, Disney's Hercules Stage Spectacular and Fosse National Tour. John has also played with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Hawaiian Band

John has accompanied Ernestine Anderson, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy DeFranco, Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Natalie Cole, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson, Donna Summer, Liza Minelli, Keely Smith, Michael Feinstein, Diane Schuur, Slide Hampton.

John states that he plays on a couple of 1s2 Calicchio Professional Trumpets; a Yamaha Professional Flugelhorn and a Schilke P5-4 Piccolo Trumpet. John uses a newly designed Monette Prana BLW S1 mouthpiece, roughly based on the original Monette lead trumpet mouthpiece model, the "BL." It has the same rim contour the BL model but with a wider inside rim diameter - the same inner rim diameter as the Monette B6. It has a custom "SLAP" cup, with a very wide funnel shape near the throat that gives the mouthpiece large targets and also makes it quite forgiving to play.