When Boca Raton-raised pop star Ariana Grande takes the stage to host “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 12, she won’t be the only South Florida native onstage — just over her right shoulder you will see Hollywood’s Summer Camargo, the youngest-ever member of the famed “SNL” house band when she took over the prized trumpet chair.
Camargo’s unlikely leap to the “SNL” stage inside Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is all the more surprising because — and she doesn’t admit this to everyone — when she got the job, she had never seen “Saturday Night Live.” Not a single skit.
“I hadn’t seen any of it before I got hired,” Camargo, 23, says with a sheepish laugh. She was ecstatic to get a gig playing with a group of top musicians on TV but did not fully grasp the show’s place in pop culture until she told her two best friends.
“They were freaking out,” she says. “I was excited, but they were crying, saying, ‘Oh my gosh, Summer, you don’t realize how big this is.’”
Camargo, who got a master’s degree from The Juilliard School last spring, is now majoring in “Saturday Night Live.” Between her new subscription to Peacock and friends’ YouTube recommendations, she’s making her way through five decades of “SNL” history, from Chevy Chase to Michael Che.
“I’d really like to know everything about it, because I just love it so much now. I still have a ways to go, because I still have 47 seasons to catch up on,” she says, laughing.
The upcoming edition of “Saturday Night Live” will be Episode 3 in its 50th anniversary season, a 21-show celebration that has booked major stars from across the entertainment spectrum. On this weekend’s show, Grande will be joined by musical guest Stevie Nicks.
New York state of mind
Camargo is no stranger to applause in midtown Manhattan: While a member of the Dillard Center for the Arts Jazz Ensemble, she won multiple individual awards when the Fort Lauderdale school was a finalist for best high school band in the country at the prestigious Essentially Ellington competition sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center.
In her junior year in 2018, as the DCA band was winning Essentially Ellington, Camargo accomplished a history-making double play as the first female trumpet player to be named the festival’s best soloist and first female to win the award for best original composition and arrangement.
When Camargo was asked to conduct a performance of her winning composition, “Leapfroggin’,” with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the then-16-year-old was introduced to the Rose Hall audience by one of her jazz heroes, trumpeter and bandleader Wynton Marsalis.
“She is spectacular in her playing and her presence,” Marsalis told the audience, with some emotion. “What can I say about her? It just gives me so much hope and feeling.”
Camargo cites her training at Dillard under revered jazz band director Christopher Dorsey for helping to prepare her for everything that came next.
In March, with an assist from Marsalis and producer Sean Jones, Camargo released her debut album, “To Whom I Love” (Blue Engine Records), a critically praised collection of songs, including seven originals, dedicated to people who have played a significant role in her life.
A reviewer for All About Jazz hailed Camargo’s “lush and deeply expressive” playing on “To Whom I Love,” calling it “an extraordinarily entertaining and spirited work.”
The album includes two standards: a joyful “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” a favorite of her middle-school band director, Jim Mullen at Calvary Christian Academy, and Camargo’s swinging arrangement of “Splanky,” popularized by Count Basie, that she dedicated to Dorsey, who retired from Dillard in 2022 .
Camargo says that while Dorsey’s reputation as a tough taskmaster was well-earned, the confidence and leadership skills she developed have been invaluable.
“He really pushed me so hard in high school, really pushed me beyond my limits, putting me on lead trumpet and giving us a lot of hard repertoire and encouraging us to audition for different honor bands,” she says. “Mr. Dorsey did a fabulous job of teaching us and pushing us.”
‘Out of the blue’
Camargo went from Dillard to Juilliard and the life of musician-for-hire, sitting in with bands at top clubs around New York City, including Dizzy’s and Birdland. She has performed with Jon Batiste at the Newport Jazz Festival, toured with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and played in the Broadway pit for Disney’s “Aladdin.”
When a call from an unknown New York number displays on a freelancer’s phone, you answer, Camargo says. It could be a gig.
On July 5, 2022, the call was from Lenny Pickett, saxophonist and director of the “Saturday Night Live” band. Trumpeter Earl Gardner was retiring from his prestigious perch with “SNL” after nearly 40 years, and Pickett wanted to know if Camargo, then 20, had any interest in joining the group when the new season began that fall.
“It’s crazy how within five minutes your entire life can be completely changed.” — Summer Camargo
Pickett had watched a mostly unseen COVID-era livestream of a performance Camargo did for the New Jersey Jazz Society. He liked what he heard and wanted her to play a couple of charts over Zoom to clinch the deal. And that was that.
“It was literally out of the blue. It’s crazy how within five minutes your entire life can be completely changed,” Camargo says. “I’m still pinching myself.”
Beginning her third season as the lone trumpet in the band, Camargo is a prominent part of the opening theme of “Saturday Night Live,” a distinctive, horn-fueled blast performed while the cast is introduced onscreen, as well as during select skits, transitions at commercial breaks and the closing music. During the monologue, viewers can see Camargo and her striking red hair in her regular spot at the rear of the band, behind the drummer.
In offering a sneak peek behind the “SNL” curtain, Camargo says that by the time you see the band on the screen at 11:30 p.m., they’ve already worked more than 12 hours.
Camargo gets to the studio at 10:30 a.m. for an intense two-hour rehearsal, followed by a break and then another rehearsal that includes the guest monologue. At 7:30 p.m., the band takes part in a dress rehearsal of the entire show, including all the songs and every sketch the writers are considering that night.
At 11 p.m., the band does a pre-show featuring mostly old soul covers (Kenan Thompson is partial to the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin'”) for audience members who have been waiting in a side room with drinks and other refreshments. “It’s almost like a club vibe, getting people hyped up,” Camargo says.
The show goes live at 11:30 p.m.
“By the time the show starts, I’ve already done many hours of playing that day. It’s pretty intense. I have to do endurance exercises every day to make sure my chops are ready for the gig,” Camargo says.
Musical guests tend to bring their own band, she says, so she hasn’t had an opportunity to interact with them, but she has had fun moments with cast members, including Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman.
“I say ‘what’s up’ to Marcello [Miami-raised Marcello Hernández], and the Weekend Update guys, Michael [Che] and Colin [Jost], are so nice,” Camargo says.
Her favorite celebrity encounter was at one of the invite-only, after-show parties at a nearby club, where she struck up a conversation with Jost’s wife, actor Scarlett Johansson, who turned out to be a big fan of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.
“I really admired her before, but she was so lovely,” Camargo says. “The camera doesn’t have to do anything on her, she’s so gorgeous.”
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com . Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell and Twitter @BenCrandell .
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