Grammy-Winner John Mayer Critiques Song Written By Silver Spring Student

SILVER SPRING, MD — A former Silver Spring student got the rare opportunity to perform and workshop her own song for a Grammy-award winning musician in Boston earlier this month. Charlotte Lessin, a 2014 Montgomery Blair High School graduate and a rising senior at the esteemed Berklee College of Music, was selected by a professor at the school to participate in a "Master Class With John Mayer."

Mayer, a previous Berklee student, was in town for two shows at Fenway Park with Dead & Company when he participated in the intense two-plus-hour master songwriting class in the school's packed auditorium June 16.

A select group of six Berklee students, including Lessin, were chosen to workshop their original songs with Mayer in front of a crowd of more than 500 students, staff and Boston residents.

Lessin called the experience "crazy surreal." The selected students first met Mayer in the green room of the Berklee Performance Center before going out on stage with him.

"He was wearing a rock star jacket," Lessin told Patch. "I totally pictured it."

Lessin grew up playing the violin for about 15 years before switching over to the guitar. She started songwriting at the age of ten and chose to perform a recent, unfinished song of hers titled "Space."

She decided to play the unfinished song so Mayer could help her come up with some ideas on how to complete it. Each student got about 20 minutes of workshop time with Mayer, who took a particular interest in Lessin's song.

"He was so nice and so positive about everyone’s work," Lessin said. "It was really nice to meet him and share that time.”

Mayer asked Lessin to play her song twice and told her, “I totally want to pick up my guitar and play with you right now." He said her song was going to be stuck in his head all day, and told her to "keep things more tangible" in her metaphor-heavy song.

Lessin chose to attend Berklee because of its prestige in the music world.

"I never knew I was going to meet John Mayer out of all things," Lessin said.

After the master class, Mayer, the son of an English teacher and high school principal, told The Boston Globe how much he loved teaching.

“I would 100 percent rather teach at Berklee than do ‘American Idol’ or something,” Mayer said.

Check out Lessin's YouTube channel, and the blog she wrote about the experience on Berklee Blogs.

Photo: Alex G./Flickr