
Initially, trumpet player Sam Beaubien wanted to be like all the other kids and play drums. But since the music department at Royal Oak, Mich.’s Northwood Elementary ran out of the instrument when Beaubien was in fifth grade, he had to pick up the horn. Fast forward more than ten years later, and the frontman for the instrumental Hip Hop/jazz collective Will Sessions, in tow with a Bachelors degree in music from Wayne State University, has been enlisted to work with both established and fledgling Detroit Hip Hop acts. Beaubien has peppered the horn ingredient for “Give The Drummer Sum” on Black Milk’s 2008 album Tronic, and for Buff1’s Pure album, along with layering Will Sessions’ debut album Many Faces, released last November. The trumpet is a notably versatile instrument, but Beaubien has taken a passion for the microphone-checking art form cultivated from his childhood — sprinkled with some jazz and bebop, to the main stage of the Michigan indie urban music surge. Whether it’s being the driving force behind Will Sessions’ Hip Hop-tinged jazz sound or crafting horns for Black Milk, 14KT and even the up-coming Slum Village reunion LP, Beaubien puts new meaning in the Detroit nickname “Renaissance City.”
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