Trumpeter, Marching Blazers drum major is composing a career in music – University of Alabama at Birmingham

Cameron Rodgers-JohnsonCameron Rodgers-Johnson left no crumbs while earning his degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The award-winning composer and arranger, 23, explored every opportunity he could in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music, playing with the Symphony and Wind Symphony Concert bands, Jazz Combo and Jazz Ensemble, and in the Marching Blazers, becoming a drum major in 2023. Alongside that, Rodgers-Johnson participated in chamber ensembles such as UAB’s Trumpet ensembles and in the Blazer Brass Quintet.
Rodgers-Johnson has earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, with a concentration in instrumental music education, and with high distinguished honors in Global and Community Leadership from the UAB Honors College. He will walk in UAB’s commencement Saturday, May 3, and after graduation will study music composition; so far, he has been accepted to graduate programs in at least two schools.
During his UAB college experience he learned how to teach and inspire others, and not give up, even in the face of failure. He rose to meet challenges with dedication and hard work.
Rodgers-Johnson began playing trumpet in sixth grade and was in Hoover High School’s Marching, Concert, Jazz and Show Choir bands before graduating in 2020. Prior to that spring, he was set on going away for school after living in Birmingham his whole life. His mom, a nurse, has worked at UAB for 24 years, and Rodgers-Johnson knew and respected the Department of Music’s Cara Morantz, Ed.D., who supports local high school bands in the area and does a great deal of recruitment for the department. She was a big part of why he chose music education at UAB. In hindsight, choosing to stay close to home was a blessing in disguise, he says.
“I do not think I would have had half of the opportunities I got here at UAB had I left to go even to another university in state,” he said. “It was the best decision I could have made for my musical development and just my development as a person up until this point.”
Choose from over 150 majors and minors to customize your academic experience and allow your passion to become your profession.
His original plan was to be a band director, a job that has given a lot of meaning to his life. While earning his degree, from 2022 to 2024 Rodgers-Johnson worked in band camps and as visiting band staff for Hoover High School, Gardendale High School and at UAB, teaching basic marching fundamentals. At UAB, he earned the Global and Community Leadership Honors Program Dean’s Scholarship and the UAB Marching Band Dean’s Scholarship and was in the McNair Scholars Program. A resident assistant at UAB since 2021, he helped connect residents to resources at UAB and to their peers.
Rodgers-Johnson auditioned for drum major every single year in high school and failed. He auditioned every year since he was a freshman at UAB — and was told no three times. His answer to his peers who questioned why he would keep going?
“Yes, I’m crazy enough to still keep trying after being told no this many times,” he said. “Finally having that dream realized and getting to do it with my other two drum majors, Gavin Bell and Caroline East, two people who I now call my best friends for life, was a dream come true.”
Throughout his degree program, he studied classical trumpet with James Zingara, DMA, jazz trumpet with Steve Roberts, DMA, and composition with William Price, DMA. Rodgers-Johnson had always been interested in music composition, and tried in high school, but says he did not yet have the theory knowledge plus the formal music training to understand how it works. After undertaking more training, and dedicating more time to exploring music, he decided to try his hand at it again and see what happened. In spring of his sophomore year, he won his first composer’s award.
“The first green light of validation, OK, maybe I am not completely bad at this, let’s explore this,” Rodgers-Johnson said. “And then I just kind of took that rope and ran with it.”
The Alabama Music Educators Association chose Rodgers-Johnson as a finalist in the Young Composers Competition each year since 2022. In 2024 he was a semifinalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Competition. His work “Impetus” for brass quintet was commissioned by Alabama Symphony Orchestra President Mark Patrick. In 2023, Rodgers-Johnson was named one of the Call for Scores winners for the Diversify the Stand/Trumpeter’s Multitrack Competition with his piece for Trumpet Ensemble titled “All Shall Come.” In 2023, his work “An American Outcry” was featured and performed by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Wind Symphony at the National Council on Undergraduate Research’s annual Conference. Other commissioned works include “Down Where the River Flows” and “Geometric Force,” both for concert band; “On an echo,” for flugelhorn and trumpet; “The Princess of Pop,” for concert band; and “Shelter Tree,” for marimba and clarinet, commissioned by his drum major colleagues Bell and East. He would go on to arrange several of the stand tunes currently being performed by the Marching Blazers at football games and with the Blazer Band in Bartow Arena.
A graduate degree in music composition typically entails learning the craft of writing music for all types of mediums such as band, choir, orchestra, chamber groups and more. To Rodgers-Johnson, it means investing time into the history and traditions of writing music, learning the craft and what made the composers and arrangers of the past successful. He will tailor that into how he wants to carry himself as a composer and what he wants his musical voice to be, he says.
“Whatever I do, I just want to be able to give back to the music community in some aspect in the way that it fulfilled and gave back to me,” Rodgers-Johnson said.
Morantz says she is “bursting” with pride reflecting on Rodgers-Johnson’s journey.
“Cameron has always known exactly who he wants to be, and his success is a tribute to his unwavering pursuit of that vision,” Morantz said. “With his deep love of composition, I could not be more excited to see him enter graduate school and allow those skills to fully blossom. He has a very bright future ahead.”
Back to Top

source