If Rick Haydon isn’t a name you recognize in jazz, it should be! Many jazz musicians and university educators know of Rick’s sterling reputation as an accomplished guitarist, but to the general listener, Rick Haydon has been a well-kept secret. For more than twenty-five years Rick has been a teacher, clinician, performer, jazz educator and professor of jazz guitar at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE), just a stone’s throw from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. A brilliant player as well as an accomplished recording engineer, Rick has been a student of the guitar for over forty years. He has studied with many legends of the instrument, including Johnny Smith, Howard Roberts, Pat Martino and Bucky Pizzarelli, to name a few.

Rick Haydon is a Professor of Music at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where he is head of the Guitar Program and manages the recording studio. He teaches Advanced Jazz Improvisation, Rhythm Section Workshop and Private Applied Jazz Guitar. He also supervises the Jazz Combo System and directs the Jazz Guitar Ensemble.

Rick has been playing guitar for forty years and has studied with many of the masters of jazz guitar, including Johnny Smith, Howard Roberts and Pat Martino. Most recently he has studied seven-string jazz guitar with Bucky Pizzarelli.

Professor Haydon has been performing professionally for over thirty-five years and has played in a variety of situations. In 1996 he performed with Herb Ellis and Mundell Lowe during the Guitar Foundation of America International Guitar Convention. He performed with Bucky Pizzarelli before a sold out concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis in November of 1998. Rick was the featured guest artist at the 2002 Quad City Jazz Festival along with Mulgrew Miller. In 2004 Rick performed with John Pizzarelli at the Classic American Guitar Show in Long Island, New York as part of the Jazz Cabaret Series. In 2004 Professor Haydon received the Woody Herman Award from the Birch Creek Music Performance Center in Door County, Wisconsin.

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