CT Trumpet Lessons, Performing Artist, Badollet Ensemble

Performing Napoli with wind ensemble tonight!  Then off for a well earned 2 week vacation!  More posts to come after my summer hiatus....stay tuned!

I have only one student leaving this year to go off to college.  She will be attending the Hartt School of Music as a double major in Trumpet performance and Music Education.  All of my other students will be continuing their studies with me next year working very hard and making progress.  My adult students continue to work hard and see terrific progress.  My beginners always start with a good sound because of my work on sound production from the beginning.  It pays off to invest time in the beginning explaining and demonstrating how to control air and tongue placement. Plans are in the works to have a regional audition workshop day either this year or next.  If you're in the New Haven area let me know if you or your junior or senior level student/son or daughter would be interested in this helpful prep day.  Plans are for early October. My brass ensemble at Neighborhood Music School continues to progress.  I hope to add more players to this gr...

One of my long term goals has always been to publish either a method book of my own or smaller books divided by levels.  There is enough sources out there for everything, but what I feel is lacking is not only a step by step method that's very easy to follow, but any good explanations for "how" to work on exercises that are presented.  My biggest pet peeve:  many methods are set up for the advanced trumpet player, so there is unrealistic expectations from the less experienced student; I even mean college level players as well as less experienced.  What happens is that a lot of burden is put on the student to have a teacher who is very good at explaining how things work within each method or etude book.  Even that leaves challenges because a teachers style may not resonant completely with the budding student or a lot can be taken for granted, or, god forbid, you get a not so good teacher. I felt in my younger college level years that I had a great teacher, but ...

So, if you are wondering the details of my preparation for maintaining proper sound, endurance, etc...for freelancing, here you go! I believe throughout my years of practicing/trying different routines that it's not as important which routine you do, but what your routine addresses.  This is where it has to become personal and dependent on where you are in your development.  This is why my routine changes to address new issues and to keep my desire to engage fresh.  When I say it changes I mean about once a year or so I try something new. WARNING ADVANCED:  First, I will tell you where I have arrived after many years of trying every routine out there.  Because of the diversity of freelancing I have found a method that works for me.  The core of it is pages I have put together from Pierre Thibaud's methods.  Later in life Mr. Thibaud had surgery and had to rethink how to play as effortlessly as possible.  He found that working on the double ped...

I love youtube video tutorials!  But, they aren't as portable. You can't listen to them everywhere, you may miss things and have to watch the video many times, and you still may find things you miss.  But, most of all for me, I like to print articles out and read them during rehearsals, on my stand, on the train, in the doc's office, etc.  There's nothing to miss when you have the printed word. The down side! Much of how we learn the trumpet is non specific, internal, hard to put into words, etc.  It's also much easier to do a video and talk than to try to explain yourself on the written page.  It comes down to personal style.  I like to write.  I'm ok with learning to express myself this way. With that said, I do hope to add some video's in the future to enhance what I have written.  With both, hopefully, you can get a sense of my approach.  I hope it helps others out there in trumpet land!

The next three weeks are a beautiful example of the challenges of freelance playing and maintaining chop endurance and musical style challenges. This week I have rehearsals and a performance with the Asylum Hill Orchestra in Hartford, CT where I'm performing the Music for the Royal Fireworks, Zadok the Priest, and the King Shall Rejoice-all Handel (all on picc), plus the Missa in tempore belli of F. J. Haydn on C trumpet.  Got the music 3 days in advance. The following week is one rehearsal with a brass quartet and harp with a performance the next day in Marblehead, MA, don't have the music for this yet. The next week I begin a month long run of playing lead on City of Angels at Curtain Call Theatre in Stamford, CT.  Got the music a few days ago, so I have the luxury of two weeks to review it and get the chops into a lead mouthpiece. On top of this I have a busy teaching schedule all during this and have to prepare for all of the above at the same time. So...how do you p...

I have an adult student who is a thoracic doc with whom I have great conversations about breathing.  Teaching him has helped me really define, verbally, control of proper air flow for trumpet playing so there isn't a contradiction between medical functionality and teacher description.  He has such an understanding of function of the lungs that he processes what I describe through his thorough lens.  With all my students I do my best to avoid too much technical vocabulary and keep things simple and easy to understand with my vast wardrobe of analogies. Vincent Penzarella has said it best, "Exhalation is inhalation without hesitation".  Now, this is an advanced concept, so although my students hear me say this, I give lots of examples of what this means.  For years I did not breath deep enough and move my air fast enough and still sounded decent.   Having a deep understanding of the importance of a very deep, relaxed inhalation and pushing out my exhalation...