I know the life of a performing artist appears glamorous at times — doing something you are passionate about in front of an adoring audience, traveling the world, being immersed in a creative art form, etc. — but appearances, as always, can be deceiving. I was reflecting on this very fact last night while trudging in the pouring rain across an acre-wide, flooded parking lot, wearing my black suit, no umbrella, and with a heel broken off of one shoe. The concert I had just completed had gone fine, but that was the only consolation from a night where I:

1. Started warming up and felt like playing the trumpet was the single most difficult thing ever undertaken by man.
2. Had the heel of my left shoe inexplicably fall off while walking backstage just prior to going on stage.
3. Played well, but felt like I was in a death-cage match against Attila the Hun.
4. Forgot to acknowledge the composer for the brass quintet we performed.
5. Came out of the hall to find monsoon conditions had once again arrived in South Florida…
6. … and realized my umbrella was in my car, which was about a half mile away across the aforementioned flooded parking lot.

I am very fortunate to have the life I do. I love music, my job, performing, collaborating with talented and creative people, and all of the great things that come along with it, but the sacrifices are immense and the glamour? Uh…. no. Not so much.

I was doing some research on H.K. Gruber’s Aerial tonight. Specifically, I was looking into the cowhorn required in the piece — how one might acquire said cow horn and what might be involved in actually playing such a thing — when I came across this Wiki page. There isn’t much information here, but I did find one absolute nugget of a sentence. Just there, at the end of the Wiki article, the very last sentence sums up something I have been trying to tell people for 20 years.

The bigger the cowhorn is, the easier it is to play.

Throughout the evolution of brass instruments, some things have never changed.

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I have arrived in Santa Cruz and headed straight to my favorite coffee house, Lulu Carpenter’s: latte art, free Wifi, great ambience… What’s not to love!

The festival is now just a few hours from the first full orchestra rehearsal, just enough time to have an amazing latte, look at a couple of things in my music before rehearsal, and grab a quick dinner. It turns out that the Brett Dean Moments of Bliss is first on the rehearsal tonight, and I’m not so sure my part is entirely ready for public consumption.

As I sit, ticking off the minutes until the festival officially begins, I can’t help but wonder what exactly lies in wait. I sit on the precipice of a musical adventure, peering down into the ravine, waiting to jump in, unsure what exactly I am going to be immersing myself in, but totally confident it will be an interesting and enjoyable journey. Right now, though, I am just going to sit back, dangle my feet over the edge, and enjoy my latte. It’s good to be back at Lulu Carpenter’s.

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I woke up early today to a foggy and cool Northern California morning, my persistent body clock informing me that it was not 6am (as the clock indicated), but rather 9am (the time on the east coast). My mind tried to reason with it, but my body was having none of it, so I was up and out of bed. Now, if I am going to be out of bed at 6am I am going to need one thing: coffee. Surprisingly, the nearest Starbuck’s is 3 miles away (I didn’t know it was still possible to be 3 miles from a Starbuck’s), so, with an ever increasing sense of urgency, I hopped in the car and headed of to the nearest palace of the bean, only to arrive drop-jawed at the sight before me. There was a line.

Before you think another thought, you have to understand that to me, arriving at a location outside of the house at 6:20am is a special occasion, a holiday of sorts, something that may only happen 2-3 times in a year — or in a decade. And if that special occasion happens to fall, as it did today, on a Saturday morning, then I feel confident that I will be virtually alone in whatever endeavor I deem to undertake, especially if it involves going into an establishment and purchasing something. Of course, this isn’t just anything, it’s coffee, and other people want it just as bad as me. As I stand in line reflecting on this fact, I realize that not everybody spends their life working until 11 on a Friday night, only to come home energized from performing, unable to sleep. Perhaps it is not as bizarre as I think to be standing in line for coffee at 6:20am. Maybe my initial thought, that strange things are afoot this morning was not the proper reaction at all. Then I pull out my phone and read my email. There is a forwarded message from my Mom:

“Giant Sinkhole Opens Near Denver City”

What?! A Sinkhole? Denver City? I pause for a moment, thinking… Denver City is in the news… Denver City is in the news because of a sinkhole…

You see, when I was very young we lived in a tiny town in West Texas called Denver City, a town so remote that you’d need a guide and a mule to find it, and even that probably won’t work. My Dad used to joke that the the town was so small they had to put both city limits signs on 1 post. We had a volunteer fire department with two firemen: the guy with the pickup and the guy with the garden hose. You get the idea. Now, there is an Associated Press news article in my inbox about — off all things — Denver City. And not just any common news article, no. This one is about a giant sinkhole that is 70 yards long, 67 yards wide, and 50 feet deep and is just 2 miles outside of town, a sinkhole large enough to swallow up a city block. Now that is bizarre.

I move forward in line now, inching closer to coffee, totally unsure whether it is normal or not to wait in line at a Starbuck’s at 6:20am, wondering what other aberrations this day has in store.

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After 4 hours of score and part study on the plane — with my eyes starting to cross and my brain showing signs of overheating — I decided it was time for a change, so once again my handy iPhone comes out to blog. It is still amazing to me that I will be able to write and post this from my phone while traveling — write in the air, post when I land. It wasn’t so long ago that connecting a phone cord to a bulky home computer was the only way to even access the internet. Now, I have a much faster connection virtually everywhere I go with a device that fits in my palm. I’m glad I didn’t have to carry-on my old tan desktop! Very difficult to fit underneath the seat in front of me.

Since my 150 or so traveling companions are not likely fans of trumpet fundamentals, I have decided that some good old-fashioned score study would be a good way to get in some necessary work. While pouring over the music for the Cabrillo Festival, I am once again struck by how difficult it is to prepare for this festival. Most pieces you play are totally unkown and unrecorded (no buying the recording to see what a piece sounds like for this festival). Not only that, much of the music is by composers whose music is unfamiliar, so you don’t have the instant knowledge of tendencies and style that you would have with a Stravinsky, Mahler, Brahms, etc. Oh yeah, and the music is just flippin’ hard too; that definitely plays a role.

So as the plane lands and I fight my way through the airport, I will likely be fingering thoughtlessly through a tricky passage, or singing some off the wall rhythm, or wondering how, as is indicated in one piece, it is going to work to have me play into the bell of a tuba with my Harmon mute on, while the tuba player wiggles the valves creating a “watery effect”. It might be cool. It might not. Either way, it will certainly be different.

Tray table is up. Time to update my blog.

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