If you live in New York and have kids, or know someone who does, consider catching the Greenwich Village Orchestra’s annual family concert tomorrow afternoon.

I got roped into subbing the principal trumpet part, and by the looks of this morning’s dress rehearsal, the concert should be a lot of fun: built around Saint-Saen’s “Carnival of the Animals”, replete with narration, costumed dancers playing the animals, and a post-concert ‘instrument petting zoo’.

Takes place tomorrow (Sunday, December 16), 3:00pm at Washington Irving Auditorium (Irving Plaace between 16th & 17th).

[As a bonus for attending, you can also marvel at my terrible, terrible attempt at playing a horse whinny sound on the trumpet at the end of the ‘Sleigh Ride’ finale. Giddyup!]

While I’m using this blog as a free bulletin board, I should also mention the upcoming benefit concert I’m playing with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, this June 21st at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.

The concert itself is Mozart and more Mozart: the Posthorn Overture, the Clarinet Concerto (with world-renowned soloist Jon Manasse), and the complete Requiem (featuring the New Amsterdam Singers’ double choir).

One hundred percent of ticket sales from the concert support the truly excellent Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education, which, for more than 25 years, has brought experiential education in the arts (including dance, music, theater, visual arts and architecture) to students of all ages around the country.

Lest you doubt the Institute’s ability to grow aesthetes, consider a recently relayed story about a six-year old kindergarden student who, shortly after her class had completed a two-week program on visual arts, came running in tears to her teacher to report: “Jimmy says abstract art isn’t really art!”

Tickets for the benefit concert go on sale this weekend at the Lincoln Center box office. For any symphony-loving arts-education-supporters on a tighter budget, shoot me an email for information on discounted tickets.

While nobody but trumpet-playing readers are likely to understand: just started rehearsals for two orchestras’ next concert cycles; the programs include Tchaik 5, Pictures, Dvorak 8 and the Mozart Requiem. I haven’t had that many notes in my parts over the last two years combined.

“There was nothing not to like.”
– Anne Midgette, in her New York Times review of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony concert I played in Friday night.

Over the past few months, along with my extracurricular trumpet playing, I’ve also started to do a bit of trumpet teaching. Helping students quickly improve is immensely vicariously satisfying, as I remember all too vividly my own struggles through the years trying to wrangle beautiful sounds from these little coils of brass.

Oddly, I’ve discovered that much of what made learning to play the trumpet difficult for me has made teaching it vastly easier. While many of the pros I play with now were naturals, I had to struggle for every small step I took forward, and the exercises and approaches that were most helpful to me seem to be similarly successful for other trumpeters – young and old – facing the same problems.

Along with the usual sorts of students – high school kids working their way up the band seating order, or adult players who put the horn down for a few decades before realizing they wanted to come back to it – I’ve also found a couple with considerably stranger stories.

One, for example, heard an NPR piece about the shortage of buglers available to play Taps at military funerals (a problem worsening as increasing numbers of WW2 veterans pass away). The piece mentioned a group called Bugles Across America (to which I belong), that helps family members find volunteer trumpet players willing to play Taps. She went to the site, and decided to learn trumpet well enough to join the group. Somewhere along the way, she also got hooked on the instrument in general, and is now trying to make up for lost time, bringing her beginning-level playing to the point where she can eventually play with small community groups.

Another woman emailed to say she was dating a trumpet player (God help her!), that his birthday was coming up, and that she wanted to try learning some basic music to play as a birthday surprise. I suggested Happy Birthday as well as the relatively simple (and romantically appropriate) My Funny Valentine, then set her to work.

Mainly, though, I’m happiest to see the progress my slightly more experienced students are making. If they keep up their current paces, they should be beating me out for gigs in the not-to-distant future, and I know I’ll be secretly thrilled.

Had a rehearsal last night with the New York Centre Symphony for a rather intimidating upcoming concert, which includes Bernstein’s Westside Story, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and the Milhaud Percussion Concerto – all rather trumpet-heavy pieces. The 1812, for example, is scored for four trumpets – two Eb trumpets and two cornets. Yesterday, however, due to schedule conflicts throughout the rest of the section, I was the only trumpet player to show up.

Playing principal in the group, I’d become used to being the most audible part in the section, though I wasn’t quite as prepared to play as the only part in the section. I hadn’t previously realized, for example, that in multiple places in the 1812, the entire orchestra stops playing, aside from the trumpets (or in this case, trumpet) who repeatedly play an extended, loud, high, and rather technically difficult fanfare.

I cannot possibly convey the initial feelings of terror upon my discovering this fact, which largely involved me playing at the top of my lungs over dead silence throughout the rest of the room. Still, despite the initial shock, it went much better than I would have expected, at least given the unintendedly soloistic nature of the playing. Following the piece, the conductor looked over to me, laughed, and said, “well, now at least I know you can play your part!”

[Note to self: next time, learn to play the viola or some other quiet instrument that hides well within a large, rather anonymous section.]

No real posts today or tomorrow, as I’m up at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music for the New York Brass Conference. Lots of great concerts (including one by my old trumpet teacher at Yale), masterclasses, and other fun trumpet stuff. Apologies to non-brass-playing readers.