For a while now I have had two brown trumpets sitting on the piano in my studio. Well, they aren’t actually brown, but I affectionately refer to them, with their raw brass patina, as my brown trumpets. They are both C rotaries: one Schagerl and one Thein. Both horns have been a big part of my performing career at one time or another, with performances in some of the greatest halls with two of the world’s top orchestras. They have played Carnegie, Boston Symphony Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Musikverein in Vienna; the list goes on. The Schagerl is the horn I used in the one significant recording that was done while I was playing principal in Chicago, the Furtwangler Symphony #2. Now, though, they sit on an upright piano in my studio in Miami.

I looked them over a few days ago only to find the valves frozen in place and some extra development of their patina. After quite a bit of elbow grease, the Thein’s valves are free and working well, but the Schagerl’s valves remain frozen in place. Looking at the horns, I am struck at how extraordinary a path a couple of sheets of brass can have, and how strange a place it is that they find themselves in now.

Any suggestions on freeing up the valves on a rotary trumpet? I think my Schagerl has plans for life beyond the top of my piano.

The recipe for bad face:

Take one heavy playing day that ends by five. Let the chops sit for up to 24 hours, then begin your warm-up as usual. Voila! You now feel like you have a face of stone and sound like… well, we won’t discuss that.

I managed to pull this recipe off in spectacular fashion yesterday. It took me an hour and a half of fundamentals and soft playing before I felt normal again. I kept staring at the piano in my studio wondering what it would be like to sit down to an instrument and have it work and feel exactly the same everyday, no matter what you did the day before. I swear, the things we have to put up with as trumpet players…

On Friday, Jon Faddis gave a master class at the University of Miami, and while parts the class were a bit controversial (something for a future article!), there were also many aspects that deserve attention and action. One of the things he talked about was the legacy of jazz trumpet playing and the importance of listening and imitating, then he demonstrated a stirring rendition of Louis Armstrong, then Roy Eldridge. He knew many solos, by many players, and he had them all memorized. There is something to that.

We live in an age where music is more portable and accessible than ever, and yet it seems that overall musical awareness and knowledge is in a long slow decline. The saddest part is that I see evidence of that decline in musicians and non-musicians alike. If musicians are not studying and listening to music — and I mean studying it enough to know it as well as Mr. Faddis so ably demonstrated — then eventually nobody will. That kind of intimate musical knowledge and ability, the kind that makes a musician a kind of walking musical history demonstration, is something we should all aspire to. Perhaps all of those iPods owned by musicians the world over can be put to better use than simply providing a soundtrack for the walk to lunch. Study the music you love and learn to imitate the artists that make it. You will thank yourself a thousand times over for every minute so invested, and what’s even better, the world of music, and all of us who make it, will thank you too.

Sometimes it is important that we experience life outside the practice room, like I mentioned in the recent article Eclipsing. However, it is important to mention that there are many, many times when we sacrifice personal enjoyment in order to get some much needed work done.

Last night I left home at 10pm to go to school and practice in my studio. I spent an hour focusing on some basic technical issues that I knew I needed to address (maintenance, maintenance, maintenance). There I was, on a Friday night, hashing through Arban’s and the like, and the school was as quiet as a tomb. I wonder where all of the music students were…