Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony has always been a favorite of mine to play – but, here’s the question? Have you heard his 4th Symphony? Check out the BSO’s recent recording of it to hear some crazy stuff! It never shows up on auditions and is rarely played, but it is big, brawny, and bristly in that awesome Shostakovich way. My colleague, Tom Rolfs, principal trumpet of the BSO, sounds incredible in all of the Boston Symphony’s Shostakovich cycle, but especially so in this piece.

Shostakovich’s fifth symphony sounds like a lullaby by comparison. 

Have you ever had trouble making the 16ths square enough in the march, while keeping the phrases long at the same time? This was an excerpt that I struggled with while in school – it is such a strange combination of square rhythms, long lines, and rests. It can take awhile to put it all together. 

The next time you practice it, play long marcato 8th notes during the half notes to subdivide. Take care to drive through them – if they are light or mechanical they won’t do you much good. We’re using them to not only keep the notes the right length but to ensure we don’t let the phrase go slack. Also practice the 8th note/8th rest/sixteenth figures as straight 8th notes to get the feel of the phrase better. You can also deliberately play the WRONG rhythm here – play triplets instead of 16ths and you’ll immediately know if you’ve been playing your 16ths inaccurately.  Don’t practice it with triplets more than once though!! Of course you can also practice the figure with 16th divisions. Notice in my rendition the crescendos that aren’t printed – these are traditional and really help drive the phrasing along. 

 Alpine Symphony – a need for peak efficiency – pun not intended!

In high school and then college, my friends and I were constantly trying to bang out the high Ds in Alpine Symphony with varying degrees of success (and bruising of the chops)! I was shocked when I finally realized that it wasn’t supposed to be crushingly loud at figure 68, but F and then (GASP) mf on a high D… But mine would only come out at the speed of PLAID (Spaceballs reference to light-speed for those of you under 40). 

For years, I thought the key was to build up my chops. I was forever working on flexibility and range and more often than not running into the same brick wall. I didn’t realize what the barrier was until very recently.

One of the things I talk with my T5 students is the idea that there is so much more to it than just the chops. My fancy name for it is integrated mechanics for the trumpet: learning to use your whole body to play more efficiently.

LOW NOTES! It’s been a huge part of my professional life since leaving school in the late 90s. Having held two 4th trumpet jobs and two second trumpet jobs, I have always been comfortable below the staff and continue to be so. 

In every audition, you’ll have to show you can play in the basement and Carmen is the most commonly requested excerpt that covers that range. There are others: Shostakovich 5 and Piano Concerto, Beethoven 5 second trumpet, Dvorak 8 second movement, Tanhauser, etc, but the focus here is Carmen.

When I was in The Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, Tage Larsen and I became good friends and remain so today. I remember talking with him about low notes as we prepared for the CSO fourth audition and what he said stuck with me: “Lets face it, they want the notes that are at the bottom of our range or off of it (in the case of low Fs) to sound like real notes. You don’t want people who play other instruments on the committee to look at the trumpet players on the committee and say, Hey – is that supposed to sound like THAT?” So with all excerpts that require that half step below low F#, take special care – MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A REAL NOTE!!!!

During the fall of 2019, my former student Bret Magliola was learning the material for the Navy band audition that he eventually would win.  Hands Across the Sea came up and I MARGINALLY learned it in helping him prepare. This year,  as the Navy Band announced another opening, I used the Practice Window Training on MYSELF to finally learn the Sousa. It seemed like the thing to do in helping my current crew as they made their recorded round auditions. 

It was interesting for me to see how this worked in my own playing. I recorded the first session, was slightly perturbed at how inconsistent I was, and then got to work. Figuring out various things that were adding to those inconsistencies started to be kind of fun – I am not the kind of person to be satisfied with unanswered questions – especially when it comes to the trumpet.

I used to “rent” this excerpt, simply running through and repeating the same mistakes. Owning this excerpt didn’t come until I thought bigger: I needed to improve the parts of my playing that were insufficient to make it sound good, namely my flexibility and clarity of articulation. Once I made inroads with flexibility and a lighter, clearer articulation — which had much more to do with how I was using my air than with articulation itself — this excerpt and others like it (Ravel’s G-major piano concerto, etc.) became much more consistent.