Trumpetverse! I’ve got two exciting bits of news for you.
Whitney George Consortium
First, I am honored and excited to spearhead a consortium to bring to life a new piece by the amazing Whitney George. We ran a consortium from June through July, and it was a runaway success (thank you to all who participated). There’s no working title yet, but we have talked about trumpet, piano, and optional electronic manipulations. All of those things are tremendously exciting for me. We have tentatively slated the premiere for September with a concert for the Brookline Arts Council here in Boston, with availability en masse shortly thereafter. If you don’t know Whitney’s work yet, there is no doubt in my mind that we will all know her soon enough. For someone who has already ‘arrived,’ she is still just getting started.
Toccata and Fugue in d minor for trumpet and piano
Second, I am very pleased to announce the availability of my arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor for trumpet and piano through Eighth Note Press in the Fall. Amazingly, until this moment in history, there hasn’t been an arrangement of this popular work for trumpet and piano. We put a ton of work into this, play testing, editing, taking feedback, re-editing. What we ended up with is dramatic, accessible, with much diversity in tonal color, that captures the spirit of both the original work on organ, as well as the arrangements for brass that we all grew up listening to. There will be parts in Bb, C, Eb, with some optional piccolo work for those that are comfortable with Bb piccolo. A huge, massive thanks goes to Andrew Bishop for his feedback and masterful engraving skills.
If you are interested in getting a copy, email me and I will put you on the list for when it is commercially available through Eighth Note.
Practice Up
Finally, I am very pleased to announce that work has begun on a new resource based largely on some of the lessons we are learning from Dave’s Dojo, as well as my network of amazing mentors and industry contacts that have been so important to my own development on trumpet. The working title is “Practice Up” because I am sick of watching and being party to people who toil endlessly on their problems in only one way (or ignore them entirely). In its current imagining, it will be a book of written masterclass-style articles and played material that distills many of the tenets that the best players have gleaned from their own experiences, development, and instruction. In some ways, I find that the topics we are putting together constitute a kind of ‘secret’ body of knowledge that focuses strictly on being the best practitioners of the trumpet that we can possibly be. And you definitely don’t have to take me at my word, because the material will come from people who are doing the job at the highest levels in the world. More info coming as it is available, but the scale of this project is huge and I can’t wait to tell you more as it develops!