Each of the past two summers I have been playing the two week new music immersion that is the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. The festival is located in Santa Cruz, California, and it offers a unique musical opportunity to simultaneously expose and be exposed to some of the best new music being written today. Every year the festival brings in the leading composers of our time and they collaborate with music director Marin Alsop and the orchestra to create concerts that focus solely on new music; there is no old musical warhorse being trotted around these grounds. If you want to hear Tchaik 5, or Beethoven 5, or Pictures at an Exhibition, you’ll have to find a different festival.

This year, I am especially excited about the festival because I am performing the U.S. Premier of Desolation Wilderness, a trumpet concerto written by the British composer, Joby Talbot. The concerto was written in 2006 for Alison Balsom and it features driving minimalist-style rhythms, soaring melodic lines, and lightning fast technical passages reminiscent of the great violin concertos; it is a welcome addition to the trumpet repertoire to be sure. If you don’t know Joby’s music, you should definitely check it out. He has done some extraordinary work. You can learn more about him by visiting www.jobytalbot.com.

Joby’s music is a perfect example of new music that bucks the trend of being difficult to listen to and academic. Indeed, my experiences the past couple of summers at the Cabrillo Festival have introduced me to a wide range of composers who write music that is strikingly beautiful and quite easy to listen to, while maintaining important aspects like originality, finely crafted orchestration, and a well organized formal structure. This new direction for modern music is exciting and necessary for the survival of classical music as an art form. Over the last 50-100 years the vast majority of composers have ignored their audiences and written music that most of the population would not choose to listen to. Artistically speaking, I have no problem with that. I truly believe a composer should write the music he/she most believes in, regardless of what people think. The problem comes when we want to be able to make a living writing or performing this type of music. For that, we need to be able to make money, and to make money we need the audience to care about our work; it’s that simple. If classical music is going to continue into the future as a living, thriving art form — and not as just an old museum relic — it will need to have new music that audiences care about, that people are excited to hear. New music is the music of our age; it needs to be the main attraction, and the main attraction has to be good!

For two short weeks in Santa Cruz that is exactly what is on offer, and I am happy to be a part of it. To see what is going on at the festival this year simply visit: www.cabrillomusic.org

{ fin }

You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You dream of a career as an orchestral musician.  You have gone to all the right schools, studied with all the right people; they have told you how great you are, how much they believe in you.  You have gone to festivals and basked in the glow of making music your livelihood.  You are young, happy, and confident; you are budding success just waiting for the Spring.  Then, you go to an audition…  You attend an audition for second trumpet in the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation.  The position pays $6,000 per year, and, if you are lucky enough to win the job, you will settle down in a place 263 miles from the nearest Starbuck’s.  You show up at the audition with 5 trumpets, stand in a room with 62 other people with 5 trumpets, collect a number, play the exposition of the Haydn, then three excerpts (all of which sound strained and forced, nothing like you really sound), then you are “Thank You’d”, made to wait in a strangely small room with bad acoustic tile, sit for an hour facing the floor, then someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce Mozart comes and tells you that you have been cut.  Yes, this little plum of a job is just a bit out of reach for someone of your abilities.

Then, you redefine yourself…

You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You are out of work.  You have no employable skills.  You play the trumpet better than 15 out of 62 people who are willing to work for $6,000 per year.  Most of your friends are out of work or… they are wildly successful and texting you daily about how much money you can make when you actually are talented.  Then they complain that they have to go to rehearsal and that the conductor really sucks.  You are having a butter sandwich for dinner, again.  You contemplate mailing a butter sandwich to your successful friends.  You are faced with a wall of anxiety, a wall of fear.  You try practicing, but you can’t shake the way you sounded at the last audition, or you wonder why you are wasting your time practicing, wondering if it will ever pay off.  With nowhere else to turn, you go to the internet.  Somehow you find yourself perusing the writings of some strange trumpet player and teacher who apparently saw the Chicago Symphony once, or something.  Now you are reading this.  This could well be your lowest point.  Now Entering: Rock Bottom.  Population: 1.

Fortunately for you, this article isn’t over, so there is at least the possibility of things improving from here.  But what could I possibly write that could help you find your way out of this miserable corner you have painted yourself into?  Keep reading; you never know what lies around the next corner, or as one of my favorite writers puts it, “the devil isn’t lurking behind every door.”

First of all, ask yourself if I have, to some degree of accuracy, captured the way you are feeling right now, the way your life is right now.  If you are one of those people trying to win that elusive first orchestra job, the answer is probably yes.  And the reason I have accurately described it is simply that I have been down that path before, as have many other successful trumpet players before me and after me, and as will others after you.  Your situation is not unique.  Rock Bottom does not actually have a population of 1, but of thousands, and it is growing all the time.  You may wonder why that makes things any better?  Well, for one thing, there is company in numbers, but more importantly, there is a pathway that leads from where you are to where you want to go, and that pathway contains the footprints of people who have gone on to do extraordinary things.  All you have to do is follow the tracks.  Careful, though — the path is slippery, and, if you slide too far off, it will be practically impossible to find your way back.  Unless, of course, you slide all the way back to Rock Bottom; then you can simply head off down the path again.  Painful, yes, but it should serve as some recourse, some sort of comfort.

Now that we have established that you are not alone in this adventure, and that many people have gone this way before, we simply need to concentrate on how you can follow the tracks in front of you.  In order to do that, you will need a few tools.  Not trumpet tools or musical tools, but mental tools — tools you will need in order to achieve the level of refinement in musicality and technique needed to be successful.  Without these tools, your mental abilities will suffer, and you will start sliding backwards before your first step has brushed that icy path.  The tools that are the most critical in this pursuit are perhaps the most often overlooked: objectivity, creativity, and determination.  They are not all you will need, but without them you are lost.

Objectivity

Objectivity is the ability to see yourself and your product as they actually are; to know what needs work and what doesn’t, not relative to other people, but relative to the standard that you must meet in order to achieve your goals.  If you need to improve your articulation, then lay out a plan and execute it.  Assess the results.  Need to improve your musicality, your sound?  There are ways to improve them.  Go about it and gauge your results. Whatever you are working on, your ability to accurately assess your progress will be key to your success.  Assess your abilities honestly; make a plan to improve.  Take another audition; assess your progress.  Repeat.  The first step to improvement is being able to see and hear yourself objectively.  Ever been advised to record yourself leading up to an audition?  I thought so.  Recording is squarely in the domain of objectivity.  It is essential.

Remember that audition for the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation?  Remember that you were one of the worst there?  Right.  Now forget about it.  You can’t forget the experience and you can’t forget the feelings, but that critical point where you assessed yourself relative to the other people at the audition?  Forget it.  It’s irrelevant.  There is only room for one on this pathway, and if you bring others along they will make you slide.  You cannot waste time comparing yourself to others who are trying to achieve the same goals.  The only thing of value that you received from that awful audition experience is knowledge about how you can do better next time.  Your sound was forced, and you didn’t play like yourself.  That is something you can work on.  Your entire focus needs to be on your playing and your audition package, not on how well you are doing relative to others.  If you work on it long enough and hard enough, it will improve.  It’s that simple.  Think about what you can do to better prepare yourself for the next audition.  What can you do to be able to actually play the way you do at home?  There are answers.  There are solutions.  You are not the result of your last audition.  You are not the result of your next audition.  You are a work in progress.  The devil isn’t lurking behind every door.

Creativity

The first thing many people would think when seeing the word “creativity” is of artistic or musical creativity, but, while that remains an important part of any artistic pursuit, that is not the kind of creativity that I see as an essential tool of achievement.  No, the kind of creativity I am talking about is the kind needed for creative problem solving.  Through objectivity you learn to see your product as it actually is.  Through creativity you will learn to find solutions to your challenges — solutions that are not obvious on the surface.  Is there something that you can’t quite resolve, some weakness that you can’t quite remedy?  This is where your creativity comes into play.  Think about that weakness.  What makes it tick?  Look at it from another perspective.  Look for parallels to other strengths and weaknesses.  Turn it over and over looking for any place you can get a better grip, a little more leverage.

Having a hard time playing cold at an audition?  Try practicing cold at home.  Try making your home environment more adverse for performing than the audition environment.

Having trouble with upper register playing?  Try a new approach, a new method.  Maybe it is the way you are practicing it, or your equipment.  Look for creative ways to solve your problems.  This may be just the thing you need to complete your audition package — the final piece in a complex puzzle.  Discuss your problems with your friends.  Think about them when you drive.  The solutions are there; they are just waiting to be discovered.  Creativity is the key to that discovery.

Determination

This could also be called focus, sacrifice, or discipline; all different words that, for our purposes, mean much the same thing.  And that is… Get off your butt.  Get to work.  Stop making excuses.  Stop allowing distractions.  You are in control of your product, of your life.  Achievement takes work, so get to work!  Think you are working hard?  Work harder.  Think you are doing everything you can?  Think again.  This is perhaps the most essential of all tools of achievement.  Without determination, none of the rest of your skills will matter.  Are you a fantastically talented trumpet player?  Great.  But you won’t be going anywhere without the determination needed to address your inevitable weaknesses.  Many very talented people have come up well short of their goals because of a lack of determination.  No one is talented enough to survive without a hefty dose of it.  You will have to make many a sacrifice, whether personal or professional, in order to achieve your goals.  I have sacrificed family holidays for audition preparation.  I have turned down lucrative tours in order to be able to attend or be adequately prepared for one audition or another.  You can’t wait for everything to fall into place, like the perfect Tetris piece for your life emerging on the horizon.  Sometimes things don’t fall into place so neatly.  But you should be right there, pushing and pulling for all you’re worth.  Sometimes round pegs do go into square holes; the hole just has to be big enough.  Determination, focus, and sacrifice will make that happen.  Think I am making too big a deal over this attribute?  Some people might, but these are the rocks against which dreams are dashed, crashing and splintering on the jagged edges of reality.  You do not want to be left picking up the shards of your dreams, wishing that you had worked harder, that you had given it your all.  Those would be dark days indeed.

It easy to think, after the emphasis I have placed on determination, that somehow it is the most important of all of these tools of achievement, but that is not the case.  There are many tools and attributes that are needed for any of us to achieve our goals, and they tend to work together, like the flow of water in an Escher painting: one leading to another, to another, then somehow – astonishingly – back to the first one again.  Each attribute is essential and cannot be compromised in any way, lest you stumble where others prevail and find yourself wending the well worn track back to Rock Bottom. 

It is true, however, that these attributes are not an end, but only a means.  The end goal remains unchanged.  You must present a package that is technically proficient and musically inspiring.  You must excite your listeners and make them interested in working with you based on the sounds that you make.  And you must prove your ability to do that on an empty stage, in an empty hall, with nothing but extremely critical ears to serve as witness and judge, and nothing but your well trained abilities and expressions to represent you; nothing more; nothing less.  The goal is quite simple, really.  It is just difficult to achieve. View yourself accurately and fairly.  Think critically and creatively.  Put your head down, block out distractions and temptations, and drive yourself relentlessly forward.  Objectivity.  Creativity.  Determination.  Use them well and you will find that even the wildest of aspirations can fall within your grasp.  Rock Bottom has just lost one more resident.

Today I had a relapse of ARS (Altered Reality Syndrome). This condition had been in remission for quite some time, but today I suffered a significant setback.

Upon arrival in Toronto — I am doing some master classes at the Glenn Gould School of Music — I hailed a cab and set off for my hotel. Once downtown, I caught glimpse of what turned out to be the Opera House.

“Is the symphony hall in this area?” I asked the cab driver.

“Excuse me?” replied the cabbie.

“The concert hall for the symphony, is it around here?” I replied, sure that I was just not speaking clearly enough. The cabbie glanced at me in the rearview mirror with a puzzled face.

“The concert hall for the Toronto Symphony, the orchestra hall, is it near here?” I asked again, hoping that the use of the word orchestra would somehow stir his memory. Sadly, though, he stared on with the same puzzled expression. Then I saw his eyes light up with recognition and he quickly turned to look at me directly, knowing that it is important to deliver good news while looking at someone directly and not through a mirror.

“Are you looking for City Hall?” he asked.

“No, no,” I said, looking out the window at the tall buildings rolling by, wondering how many people live in major metropolitan cities that have never even heard of a symphony, “Thanks anyway.”

It does have a way of making that opening solo in Mahler 5 seem a bit less important doesn’t it. Perhaps I should have asked about the Maple Leafs instead!

Today I am headed to California, back to the city by the bay, back to the state where my orchestral career began, back to one of my favorite places on the planet. I won’t be there for long, just tonight and tomorrow in San Francisco, then a few days with family out in the East Bay, but it will be enough time to reflect (again) on the paths I have followed, where they have taken me, and where I go from here.

I got my Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, and I distinctly remember the idyllic dreams I had about playing the trumpet for a living, and the kind of life it could bring me if I could just get good enough. Most of those dreams are laughable at this point; as I have moved through my career I have realized that many of the things I dreamed about essentially don’t exist. That being said, however, there are many great adventures and experiences that have been thrown my way simply because I have a fair proficiency at buzzing my lips together and making some neat sounds with a fancy brass tube. I have travelled around the world on this ability, played in the world’s great concert halls, played with some of the world’s greatest musicians (even Metallica!), and lived all over the country and met all kinds of interesting people. It has been quite a ride, an unexpected and jarring one at times, but good nonetheless. I wouldn’t have known, during those formative days at the conservatory, to dream of the things that have brought me the most happiness or to stop dreaming of the things that have brought me the most frustration. Then again, that is probably the most likely outcome of dreams: we seldom follow their actual path, but it is the places they take us — the places we never knew or expected — that make those dreams so valuable, so necessary. Today I return to both the source and object of many dreams, to walk some of the same streets and think some of the same thoughts. Today, I’ll be California Dreamin’ again.

A visit with my therapist during my ongoing struggle with Altered Reality Syndrome (ARS)…

- So, do you want to talk about what brings you in here today?

- Not really, but then again, I didn’t want to talk about it yesterday either, but I did, so I suppose I will talk about it now too.

- Where were you?

- I was at a golf lesson.

- You talk about your career at your golf lessons?

- No, but a huge thunderstorm came through just as I finished my lesson, so we had to wait it out in his office. We just sat and talked for a while. I asked questions about his life and he about mine.

- So what happened?

- Well, he asked about my background, so I told him a shortened version. The one where I chase my trumpet around the country looking for a job I would actually enjoy. Sacramento, Chicago (briefly on 4th), San Francisco, then Chicago again (this time in the chair). I told him that playing Principal in Chicago had been a long time dream that just wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. I told him that it was an extremely prestigious position in my field, that winning that audition was something like winning the U.S. Open in golf.

- What did he say?

- He said, “Wow! That’s great! Now, was that a full time job in Chicago, or… what did you do to make a living?”

- Oh.

- Yeah, oh.

- So what did you tell him?

- What do you mean?

- Well… what did you do to earn a living in Chicago?

- I think I’m finished talking to you.

- Already? Was it something I said?

- I said I’m not talking to you.