Watching trumpeter Claudio Roditi lead some unfamiliar sidemen through an afternoon rehearsal prior to an evening performance provided a good look at something not readily apparent at concerts. While the audience at that night's show in Ottumwa, Iowa saw Roditi's talents as a player and improviser (and even singer) displayed, most concertgoers could only have a vague idea of Roditi's abilities as a bandleader. As one observer witnessed, participants in a Roditi-led rehearsal are likely to learn a thing or two about Brazilian music.

A Rio de Janeiro native now residing in New Jersey, Roditi was in Ottumwa (best known as Radar O'Reilly's ostensible hometown in the TV show M.A.S.H) for a September 2009 concert at Indian Hills Community College. He'd been brought into the Heartland under the aegis of David Sharp, an IHCC instructor whom Roditi had met several years earlier at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln while performing with UNL's jazz orchestra. Sharp, who was playing saxophone with the band at the time, has since garnered wide renown as a talented arranger, and Roditi was eager to praise him. "He's a killer writer," Roditi effused. "I love his arrangements—simple and so effective. And he's a great saxophonist, too."

At his disposal for that afternoon's rehearsal, Roditi had Sharp and three other sidemen regarded throughout Iowa as among the state's elite players. Sharp, a University of Miami alumnus who went to graduate school at UNL and became an adjunct professor there, was drawn to IHCC a decade earlier by every adjunct's dream: a full-time gig. During his tenure, Sharp has made a habit of bringing such national and international heavyweights as