Brass Chats

Let's start off with David Krauss. We interviewed him a while back, and he calls you the Yoda of the trumpet. What types of things did you guys work on together? Why does he say that?

When I first met Dave, he wasn't playing very well, and I evaluated him in a lesson and I told him, "Dave, if you want to study with me, you have to turn around 180 degrees and go exactly the opposite direction."

He was breathing down low, he was trying to make a big sound, he was doing everything wrong. Basically, I got him to change everything, and to his credit, he took it and he made it his own, and he figured out how to do it for himself, and it was just terrific. 

When Dave came to me, he was floundering, and so we got him just to play more efficiently - to find the sweet spot in the sound. That is where most people are completely clueless. They're clueless because of the vocabulary that people use, and the vocabulary is not good.

Take, for instance, the word "Centered." 

It's a really nice word. It denotes certain good things, but I believe that the sweet spot in the sound for all the instruments, not just the trumpet, is on top of the sound. 

The people who have "It," are one half of one percent of the best players in the world. They all have that beautiful, ringing, resonant tone that just lights up - that's always perfectly in-tune... and it's the most musical thing you ever heard. 

Who are a couple of examples of trumpet players who would fall into that category?

Wynton's old recordings of the Haydn and the Hummel are absolutely fantastic.

James Galway has "It." It's a big, fat sound, but how he gets it is through precise precision, right on top of the sound, and if you hear anything go out of tune ever with Galway, it's always just maybe two cents sharp, which is great, because, like Dennis Brain said, "I'd rather play a little sharp than play out of tune." 

So you find that people play too low? 

Always. Absolutely always. There's never a person who comes here to come play for me that just makes a sound that rings.

Playing well is loaded with paradox. It's a world of opposites. For instance, if you want to get a big sound, you have to aim small. As soon as you aim for a big sound, it goes away and you've lost it. You've gone past the sweet spot. If you want a big sound, aim small. 

Another thing is... the only way you can get control, is to let go. It's opposite all the time, so what it really boils down to, is to play where the note tapers itself. Play in the taper zone. 

So, how do you find the taper zone? Everybody comes in here and I get them to play a second line G. They'll play a G, and I'll say, "Okay, now float it.  Let it go.  Let it go where it wants to go without manipulating it." And undoubtedly, by the end of the note, as they're tapering it, the pitch of the G goes up and up and up and up, and then it settles and tapers beautifully by itself. 

I'll say, "So, do you feel where that note is when you just let it go, and you let it taper? When you let it go all the way to the taper zone?" 

"Well, start the note there."

And it's a very small place. The sound should come from the taper, and go to the taper. But most people play open-ended notes.  And so it's open on both ends and it sounds harsh. It's pressed down, and it loses the beauty of the sound.

See, that's the most important thing... the beauty of the sound. 

What causes people to do that? Why are they all doing that?

They listen to people who tell them things, and they continue to do things even if they don't work.

What are some of these misconceptions you talk about? The most common ones that are being incorrectly taught? 

The first thing is - breathe down low. That's the first thing that will prevent you from doing making a good sound.

That's a controversial one. There are a lot of people who strongly disagree with that, and a lot of people who strongly agree with it. Where's this come from?

Where does it come from? It comes from how the body works naturally.

First of all, you should be sitting up straight, and pick up your chest before you begin playing. It's a whole bunch of little stuff that makes a big difference. If you actually pick up your chest before you start playing, then the air can just flow in there. If you take a breath, and pick up your chest, and breathe in through your nose. All the way. It starts down here, doesn't it? But that's not where it ends up.

That's just natural. That's the way it works. But, to play the trumpet, a lot of people say we have to breathe a certain way.  But when I breathe like that there's a lot of tension.  Then the only way to get the air out is to push it out. But pushing the air out drives the tone down, and ruins the sound. It also pounds on your lip - it just beats the hell out of your lip. 

You once told me in a lesson, I had a lesson with you many years ago, you once told me that. You had a front-row seat at the Met and you got to see the world's greatest singers, and you saw them breathing from their chest.

Always. 

And you can hear it. You hear it. They pick up their chest.

If you take a breath with your chest up, and you fill up naturally.  (Actually I've been having much success lately with having guys make a little hissing sound in their breath). It does a couple of things. It engages the corners. Most people play with a very floppy embouchure, because they're making the big sound and they're using a lot of air, they play with a floppy embouchure. It doesn't work.

What do you mean by a "floppy" embouchure? 

Soft. Mushy. Instead of together. 

When you hear Dokschitzer recordings, you can hear every breath he takes. He's like, "Hssss." Every single one. And he's right on top of the sound. Right on top. So, he has his voice.

When you play on top of the sound - once you figure out how to play there...  if you stay in that taper zone, where the taper lives, where the note really is alive and lives, you can brutalize the note and not have it come apart. It turns to flame, it turns to burn. And when it turns to burn, that's a green light. That's awesome. 

I used to play as loud as I could sometimes, and it was just right, because the tone was still beautiful.

What are some of these other misconceptions that are commonly taught. You just mentioned the breathing.

There are three things. One - Breathe down low.  Two - say "Ah" or "Oh" inside your mouth. "Ohh, ahh!" - as you're setting your embouchure. When you're producing the tones say, "Ah, oh," to make big sound. Three - use more air.

We have teaching for years and years that says, "Breathe down low, say 'Ah' or 'Oh,' and when you run into problems, use more air." 

It's all wrong. All of it. You've gotta breathe naturally, and you have to say "Yeee! Yeee!" All the time. You have to say "Eee" all the time. You know, in the Arban book, it says the pronunciation, right? It says "To to to to to." 

Well, Dave Gordon in Seattle, the principal trumpet of Seattle, reminded me that it's a French book. The Arban's book is a French book, and indeed, the pronunciation for "To" is "Tew, tew, tew." 

"Tew, tew, tew." And what happens is, it creates a V in your tongue, doesn't it?

"Tew." And the tip of your tongue goes down behind your bottom teeth, and your tongue turns into a V, and it goes forward. Tongue forward. That's what everyone has to do. That's where high notes come, that's where efficiency comes from.

So, again, breathe down low, say "Ah" or "Oh," and use more air. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. You do one of them, you can't play. You do all three of them, the trifecta, you're a complete basket case. 

It's what most people do. I've had people tell me, "I would've never, ever, in a million years thought to look on top of the sound to find the sweet spot. I wouldn't have thought in a million years, because everyone says 'centered.'" 

And then some people say that the sweet spot is on the bottom of the sound, so you get a "Raaaah!" But that's not the trumpet. The trumpet should be sounding like a trumpet. It's gotta be brilliant, you gotta come in on a white horse and take some heads, swinging the sword once in a while.

You see, when I was at the Met, I would always, especially when I had something that was important for me to play that I was nervous about, I would always finish my breaths through my nose. 

It was an insurance policy for me, that I would have the proper set-up, the right resistance, and the support. It gave me time to get my lip in the mouthpiece and that's what I would do. 

More and more, I'm trying to get guys to breathe through their face. The whole thing. Breathe through your nose, breathe through the corners of your mouth. 

So what your going for is you want the inhale to be roughly the same as the exhale.

I'll ask guys when they come here, "Do you have a physical sensation of air leaving your body when you're playing?" They're like, "Yeah." No you shouldn't. You shouldn't. Do you have a physical sensation of air leaving your body when you're speaking? No.  Do I feel it going out as I'm speaking? No. The only way that the air comes out of your body is through the resonance and the ring of your tone of your voice. 

Another thing is - people like to breathe in rhythm, also. They love to go, "One, two, (breathe)."  And I'm like, "Wow.  That is really not good."  Why? Because it reinforces the "suck-blow."  I like to tell my guys, once I get to know them and once they start understanding what I'm talking about, "If you blow you suck!"

My job when someone comes to see me is to get any semblance of "blow" out of their playing and replace it with sing, and with musicality, and artistry, as opposed to note processing.

So you want to work with the resistance of the instrument. 

Exactly! 

You need to play in the taper zone where the note lives - where it is alive.  That's on top of the sound.  We can argue about that 'till the cows come home, but it's on top of the sound for singers.  It's on top of the sound for the best fiddle players in the world.  On top of the sound for best flute players... the clarinet players... 

Sabine Meyer. She plays on top of the sound.  Every note she plays on the clarinet is perfectly, perfectly in tune. I enjoy hearing her play. That's why I enjoy hearing her play - because she makes me smile. When performers are playing in this way, it gets an involuntary reaction from the listener. The listener breaks out into a smile.  When you hear someone with "It" who's playing in the orchestra, they get your full attention and you're like, "Wow" and it raises the hairs on the back of your neck. 

That's what I'm talking about.  A beautiful musical experience.  And that's only created if you produce a viable tone, a real tone, a specific thing.  A tone has resonance, it has ring, it's perfectly in tune, and it takes on a life of its own. 

I like to say that it's more like surfing than note processing, because once you have the resistance established, and the sound established, and it's ringing, and it's vibrant... then it's simply a matter of whether you can concentrate well enough to make it from the beginning all the way through your thing.  You play the phrase - you burn the music. You know what I'm saying? It's like you flip the switch.

Okay, here it comes. I'm gonna flip the switch now. I'm about to play.

    Click.

    Still burning, still burning, still burning, still burning. 

    Done. Click.

How about articulation?

If you put your tone first, your articulations are going to be better. I've had experiences where guys come in here and they say, "Well, I've been working on my tonguing for a month, six weeks." I'm like,

"Really? Oh, okay. I didn't know you had trouble tonguing, but okay. Well, what have you been tonguing? What have you been practicing?"

"Oh, I've been doing the Goldman book and da da da da da da."

"Okay. Well, show me what you've been doing. Let's hear it." 

And so they start doing it, and I'm like, "That doesn't sound very good." And then I try to play it, and I can't play it either, and that doesn't sound very good. And in two minutes, I can't tongue anymore, and I yell at the kid, and I say, "Look what you did to me! Now I can't tongue either!"

So, tonguing is a thing- Okay. You've got to be able to tongue a whole bunch of different ways according to what you need to do musically.

It all comes back to, "Don't fuck up the tone." 

If all your energy is just put into the effort of making the most resonant, ringing tone you possibly can, then all is going to be well in the universe. All your physical ducks line up in a row because you're making the resonant, ringing sound.

It's the ring and the sound that makes your chops work great. And it's not the chops working great that puts the ring in the sound. You know what puts the ring in your sound? Will power.  If you can hear it,  you can do it.  If you can't hear it, you can't do it.  And that's where the different levels of talent come into play.

What about time?

I'm an anti-subdivision person. 

For me, the time is inside of me, and it just grooves, and a groove is better.  When something's in a fast four - I'll feel it in two. When something's in three - I'll feel it in one.

I'll feel the bigger picture rather than the "one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a."  Because I can't see the forest for the trees when I go "one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a."

What about pitch?

Pitch is completely taken care of when you make a beautiful ringing, resonant tone.  When we play this way, there's no manipulation involved. No manipulation of the lips.  No manipulation of the pitch. 

You let it go, and you let it sail to where it wants to go.

What's the proper way to use a tuner?

Throw it away.  It's useless.

I never owned one.  And occasionally, in the pit, somebody would be playing around with one and if I had to tune up my rotary trumpet or something, I'd tell him to take a look and see where I was - if I was in the ballpark. But that's about all it's useful for.

I've had people call me up two weeks after a lesson and say... 

"Jim. I'm doing great. It feels fantastic, we're having a lot of fun. My range is great, my endurance is great, but when I go up to a G on top of the staff, well, maybe it's just two cents sharp. What should I do?"

I say, "Sounds great, right?"

"Yeah."

"Feels great, right?"

"Yeah."

"Throw the fucking tuner out." Throw it out.

Musicianship.

If you're making a beautiful tone, you can be a musician.  If you don't make a beautiful tone, you're a note processor, and you can play at the music as much as you want, but you're not going to be in it.  

When you make a beautiful tone, it's a transcendental experience. It changes everything. It's magic. 

It turns you from somebody who's trying to operate this thing. "Tuka tuka tuka tuka tu."  To this being a complete extension of you, part of you. It becomes you. 

It's no longer plumbing.  A trumpet is plumbing.  And if you make a beautiful, beautiful tone on it, then you become the instrument.  See you're the instrument.

Auditioning.  And maybe along the terms of how it relates to nerves, or stage fright.

You have to claim the job for yourself in your mind before you even show up. 

You have to know you're going to be the best guy, you have to go in there and say, "Check this shit out.  This is how I'm going to play, and if you don't like it, that's fine." It depends on your personality, but for me, I knew I was going to win before I went, in my mind.

Before I won the job at the Met, I was principal trumpet in the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra.  In my fourth year there we went on strike and the orchestra folded, so I was out of work for something like 10 months living in Oklahoma, going blind, wearing a telescopic device to read my music. I had a baby about to turn four.

I was under a lot of pressure. 

How did you deal with that? 

I don't know. I'd been to so many auditions. I mean I'd been runner up six times. 

Every time the screen comes down, they would see my telescope... and the alarm bells went off.

So I never got hired. The Met had a screen all the way through the finals, and that's why they hired me - because they had no idea.  And then the personnel manager said, "Well, what's up?" And I said, "Just give me two years like everyone else, then decide whether you want to keep me on or not." And he was agreeable to that, so I eked out 15 years.

It's a miracle I had any of them.

I want to get to my favorite question for all these interviews. How did you 'get good' at the trumpet?

I really worked hard once I got out of college.  I went to University of Connecticut for two years, and I went to Juilliard for three years.

I was okay in high school, but I had an amazing transformation after my freshman year in college.

I went down to Eastern Music Festival down in Greensboro, North Carolina.  It was the summer of 1977.  I was 19.  I met Wynton Marsalis there.  He was 15 at the time.

And the trumpet teacher was a guy named John McElroy.  He plays first trumpet in Alabama.  He's a terrific player. I was playing on a 5C all through high school. And I had no range, no tone, no endurance. I was not doing well. 

John McElroy had all the trumpet students for the camp - about eight of us, I guess - in his room, and you know what his audition was?  His audition was, "Okay, everybody get out your horns. Just play a high C as loud as you can. You, play a high C.  And you, play a high C.  And you, high C."  He gets to Wynton and Wynton goes "Pshhhhhhh!" I was like, "Wow! Wow, this kid's awesome!"

But anyway, the point of this story is that I was having a lesson with Big John, and he was looking at my mouthpiece. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the horn, and he stuck it in his pocket.  Then he took out a 1C and he plugged it in the horn.  When I started looking at it, and he berated me, called me a pussy, and told me that I was going to be playing that mouthpiece for the rest of the summer.

And I said, "Oh, really?" Because I felt like a toilet bowl. 

But I went from a 5C to a 1C, and within five days, my range went up five or six notes, my endurance got better, and my sound went from "Ehh!" to "Bshhhhhh!" 

So yeah. So, my message is...

Play the largest mouthpiece that you can handle.  My 5C was too small and my lip didn't have enough room to flap around in the mouthpiece - especially when you start pounding on it.  You get tired, you swell up.  Everything cuts off. With a big mouthpiece, you got room for your lip to swell up and you can just keep playing. 

I used the mouthpiece that McElroy put in for all my auditions, and for my first five or six years at the Met. 

And the only reason I changed it is because I hit it with a six iron, swinging a golf club in my apartment in New York.

(Interviewers Note:  You'll have to watch the interview to hear the entire story!)

After college, you said was when you had a real transformation. What happened then? After college.

I was having "Poor me" issues.  "Was I playing for me or was I playing for my father?  Did I really want to be a trumpet player?"

All this psychobabble bullshit.

I didn't know that I wanted to. 

Once I decided that I actually wanted to play trumpet - for me, that's when it took off. 

That's some heavy stuff. So it was within you, it wasn't something that happened, it wasn't a teacher you saw, or anything.  It was just deciding that you wanted to do it for yourself.

Yeah.  After Juilliard, I went to Mexico City for a year, played associate principal down in the Mexico City Philharmonic. And after that we had to leave because everything was in chaos.

So the year following that, I pretty much didn't play for quite a long time. I was a sales clerk at thrifty drugstore.

Yeah. Thrifty - employee of the month.  About 10 months, I worked there. 

How long did you take off the trumpet?

Almost a year. 

My wife sat me down one day and said, "You're miserable. I can't stand seeing you like this and you gotta play."

And at that point principal trumpet for the Rhode Island Philharmonic was open.  And that's not a job but...

I went from southern California, and I went back to my dad's house... and succumbed to his will.  I had three weeks to get in shape and win the audition for the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

So you prepared for three weeks for the audition after not having played for about a year?

Yeah. And I won the audition.  I had to beat Russell Devuyst - who's a really good trumpet player.  He just quit his job in Montreal, he was playing Montreal for years and years.  24 years.

So I actually had to beat a legitimate player.  After that, I moved back to Rhode Island from California, and that's when I found out I was going blind.  The doctor said... "Six months, you're not going to be able to read anything anymore." 

And he was right, and I was like, "Wow, what do I do now?"  I said, "Well shit. Let's just keep going."  So I just kept going.  I kept taking auditions.  I was runner up in Seattle for principal trumpet.  I think Charlie Butler got the job back then.

So these were all auditions where you were playing great, but when the screen went down - you would get axed?

Well yeah, but in Seattle I screwed the pooch on sight reading because I just couldn't read.

And then the next audition was the Oklahoma Symphony. And that took forever. That took, like, four trips out, and playing with the orchestra. So I finally got the Oklahoma Symphony job, and that was okay. The first year was okay. Second year was ... I had to find my telescope. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I got a couple more questions before we go to the Monster Round. We did some homework. We talked to Mark Gould and Pete Bond. Pete wouldn't give us any info on you. I'm still mad at you, Pete. You could have given me some dirt.

But Mark Gould came through for us. I don't know what any of this means, but he gave me two things. He said, first of all, he says he saved your job after a stage performance of Pagliacci.

Absolutely true.

This is great. He did save my job. 

I played a Pagliacci on stage one Saturday night, and it was like the last show of the week. And I figured, "Well shit, after I'm done playing the call, I'm off." So, I like to act a lot when I'm on stage, because I was on stage. I used to used to bite the coin, you know, and call the chorus on stage and take money, you know, I was just doing the shtick. Jim the actor up there. 

So I finish it, I say, "Ah hell, I'm done." So I put the trumpet under my arm and I pull out a little bottle of Chivas from my sash, and I go pop. Glug glug glug glug glug. Put it back in my sash-

On stage?

On stage. Put it back in my sash. I walked off stage, and I'm happy, you know. 

The phone rings at nine o'clock next Sunday morning, it's like 9:15. Mark Gould is on the phone. He goes, "Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"Jim?"

"Yeah? What's up?"

He goes, "Jim, were you drinking on stage last night?" I was like, "Uh, why?" "Well, I've gotten some phone calls." I was like, "Well, yeah." He goes, "Jesus Christ." He goes, "If anybody asks, deny it. There was tea in that bottle."

So it's true, he did save my job. 

But, I saved his life twice, though. 

The first time was when the trumpet section went down to Sammy's Romanian Steakhouse on the east side, and we had dinner. Gould ordered vodka, and so they bring out a bottle of vodka frozen in a block of ice, and put it on the table.

Well, we were so wrecked coming out of Sammy's Romanian, that Gould stepped right into the street into an oncoming car.

And the blind guy grabbed him by the back of the neck, and pulled him back, and the car went, "Whoosh!" 

That was the first time. The second time was on stage in Aida. The last time he ever played Aida. We're standing on stage on a box, and our feet, with no railing around or anything. Our feet are about 12 feet off the stage, 10 to 12 feet up in the air. So that's pretty high up there. And so the wall's coming down with the soldiers on top of it, and if you're not careful you can get vertigo.

So anyway, I told Gould, I said, "Listen, when the wall starts going down," I said, "Don't look at the wall. You've got to look at the crack in the floor where the wall's going down there, and if you just look at the crack of the wall, you're going to be cool. But if you look at the wall, you're gonna get weird, you're going to start doing that."

But what I didn't tell him is that when we bring the trumpets up in unison there, when you bring the herald trumpets up, you see the bells going up against the background of the of the Met, and the wall and everything. And Gould started going like ... like this, and he started ... and he started going over, and I grabbed him with my left hand, and I played the thing with my right hand, and he just stood there the whole time just going, "Ohhhh!" 

He didn't play a note?

Not a note.  I just grabbed him, just grabbed him, and held him in place, because he almost went ... He started doing this one.  

Yeah. And all the chorus girls were down below there, so it would have hurt them too. 

Those are the two times that I saved his life. 

Second one. Brandenberg in a pillow.

Yeah. This is classic.

I got to play the Brandenburg with Jamie at Carnegie Hall. And I guess it was -- the fault, goes to me. So anyway, we were rehearsing it and-

Mark played the Brandenburg. He said he won an audition to Hartford Symphony or something like that. Springfield Symphony at the Brandenburg.

Right. He wanted nothing to do with it. He was like, "It's yours, man."

So we're at the dress rehearsal and ... at Weill Recital hall at Carnegie, and Jimmy has the band over on the right hand side of the stage, and he's in the middle and I'm over on the left hand side of the stage, completely alone. And I played it from memory, because I couldn't see it anyway, and I was tired of pretending and I didn't want the stand in front of me, so I played it from memory. Didn't use any music. 

So we're rehearsing it, and Jimmy's conducting. And instead of pointing straight down into the hall I kind of did a little, you know, towards the middle, and Jimmy stops and he goes, "Dolf, be careful there, you're zigging me a bit."

And I looked at him, and I don't know why. I looked at him and I said, "Well, what are you going to do for the people in the first three rows? Have them sign a disclaimer before they come in?" And the whole freaking band just fell on floor laughing, and Jimmy's sitting there going, "Ahblah blah blah." Because it's not funny unless he says it right. 

"Blaha blaha blaha, okay." Well, we went on with the rehearsal, and then he asked me, "Do you want to do anything tomorrow before the show" And I was like, "No, let's just come in and do it." "Okay, fine." 

So the performance day comes up. It's in the morning. Ken Hunt calls, Ken is this guy who takes care of everything. And he says, "Jimmy needs to see you before before the performance." I said, "What, why?" I said, "He told me we're not doing anything." "No, he needs to see you." I was like, "Oh man." 

So I had to get dressed, take a shower, get dressed, go down there, go see him. He just finished rehearsing another one of the Brandenburgs. And he goes, "Oh, Dolf. Oh, I'm glad you came in. You know, I was thinking about, I was thinking about what you said the other day, and well, I was wondering if you would mind my playing into this?" And he had a stand with a velvet pillow taped to it.

And I looked at him and I said, "Absolutely not." I said, "Listen, it's good." And then I went in and went into the trumpet thing, and I said, "Listen, it's going to mess up the resistance, it's going to mess up my balance, and besides, I'm playing it from memory because I don't want anything in front of me." And he goes, "Oh, well, okay." And so, the performers went off, and I did really well, and he came up to me afterwards and said, "Dolf, you hot shit!" and he gave me a big hug, and that was it. 

So you told Jimmy Levine was up? You said "I'm gonna do it this way."

That's pretty much true. Yeah.

So Peter Bond, bless Peter. He gets this pillow with a hole in it, and he has the first page of the score to the Brandenburg 2 all burned off and singed at the corners and everything, and there's a big hole in the thing, and he and he goes up to Jimmy, he goes, "Hey, Jimmy, this is for Dolf. Would you sign it?" So Jimmy signed the pillow for me. 

All right. Well, those are all my questions. I've got one more segment we like to do for everybody, it's called the Monster Round. It's like a lightning round, so we just ask you rapid fire questions and you answer as quickly as you can, and concisely, that whole thing. So, this is the Monster Round, with Jim Pandolfi. 

What's the first thing you would do as president?

Ohh, increase the minimum wage should $20 an hour.

What do you miss most about the Met job?

Camaraderie. 

What do you miss the least?

What do I miss least?  There were none. 

If you could put up a billboard in New York City, what would it say?

"All hail Emperor Trump!" 

Given the choice, would you rather build your own house or score a touchdown in the Super Bowl?

Build my own house.

What's your favorite all-time book?

"Golf in the Kingdom."

What's the most common mistake you heard at Met auditions?

Breathing bad.

Name three trumpet players you always wanted to sound like.

Andre ... Maynard Ferguson, Bill Chase. 

Favorite cartoon character.

Foghorn Leghorn.

Favorite jazz trumpet player. 

Clifford.

What's the most difficult trumpet technique to teach?

Making a tone. It's hard!

Best brass quintet of all time.

Oh, the old Canadian Brass was awesome, with Ronnie? Ronnie Romm and those guys.

What's your favorite opera?

To play it, it would be probably be "Othello."

And to listen to?

To listen to ... Oh, like, "Manon Lescaut."

Last question. If you could have a beer with anybody in history, who would it be?

Maurice Murphy. I'd love to go hang with Maurice.

Please share your thoughts and/or this interview with others!

Joe Alessi has been principal trombone of the New York Philharmonic for over 30 years. He's taught at Juilliard for nearly that long, and is widely considered to be one of the best trombonists in the world — if not the best in history!  

We’re honored that we were able to sit down and talk with Mr. Alessi in this episode of Brass Chats.  You’re bound to learn something that will inspire you to get yourself into the practice room and make some headway in your own playing.

You'll also want to check out our Teaser Episode with Joe Alessi.

What’s the most challenging part of playing trombone?

Trombone players are like place kickers or field goal kickers.  Most of the game you’re sitting on the sidelines.  You might warm up a little bit, but then you have to get up and hit the game-winning field goal.  

I think that’s a little bit like what we do.

As you know, trombones sit around a lot.  And then we have to come in on something like the Rhenish or Brahms First or something like this - and it’s very exposed.

I would say that the toughest part of the job is staying very calm and executing these beautiful little chorales perfectly.

What’s the most challenging part, for you personally, of playing with the New York Philharmonic?

At this point, thirty-one years has been a long time.  So, keeping the job interesting is a challenge.  I’m very lucky because I have great colleagues - such a great brass section - and the trombone section is just wonderful.  But, for me, it’s challenging to just keep it interesting every day.  Especially when playing a piece you’ve played a thousand times before.  I always love when a conductor comes in and asks for something different.

So, I think it’s a bit monotonous sometimes.  Playing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth for the 150th time — I would say that part of it is challenging. 

But just the sheer talent that’s on the stage of the Philharmonic is motivating. Everybody’s doing their very best.  That’s something I want to match — all you have to do is listen to three or four bars of something and you get motivated.

Why did you pick trombone? 

I’ve told this story many times. I was a trumpet player first. My dad was a trumpet player. 

I started playing trumpet very early — so I was getting quite good with technique. By the time I was eight — after playing trumpet for three years — I was already wanting to do harder solos.  I’d gone through a lot of the basic books already. The next step was to play more challenging things and that meant higher ranges and so forth. But, at eight years old, I didn’t have much of a range. 

I just needed development, I was only eight.  But, my father could see that I was getting frustrated — so he brought home a trombone. He felt that that it would fit me better. 

He knew what he was talking about with the mouthpiece and so forth — it seemed to fit my face better. I reluctantly gave in and tried the trombone and, of course, the first note I played was a high B flat. That’s a tuning note on a trumpet. That convinced me somehow to play the trombone — and that’s how it all went down. 

Your dad was a professional trumpet player and your mother was an opera singer with the Met.  I’m wondering what elements of this background made their way into your trombone playing or your musical approach overall? 

Yeah, my brother was a trumpet player also. We would all be practicing at the same time. The dog would be barking and my mother would be singing — it was kind of a noisy household. 

My mother had a beautiful voice, you can hear her on my website, I have a link dedicated to her. 

She had an amazing voice and her phrasing was world class. I guess I must have picked up something from listening to her vocalize and sing. My dad was a real brass technician. He knew about embouchure, he knew about air, he knew about support. So, if I had to ask any questions, I’d just go to them.  It was very simple. 

My mother came in one day while I was practicing — I was having trouble with something and getting frustrated.  She said, “You know, if you just simply sing that phrase it’ll work.”  Sure enough — I just used something different in my mind in order to sing it, and it made me look at the passage in a different way.  It came out nice. I will tell students the same — put the horn down when you get frustrated and actually vocalize or conduct a little bit so that you can free yourself from the instrument. That’s so important when you practice. 

If you’re getting frustrated and something’s not happening.  Don’t play. Don’t practice it anymore.  Simply sing what you’re trying to play and just focus in on the music. Then pick up the instrument and try it again. 

How did you “get good”? Talk about some of your work ethic. Your routines. How long would you practice?

I’m always reluctant to talk about how long you should practice.  Some people practice a long time and they do it wrong.  It’s not the amount, it’s how you do it. 

I was pretty organized with the practice as a student. I liked to plan it ahead of time. For example, one of my students just sent me his practice plan. He did it by the clock. He said five minute he’s going to practice flexibility. Ten minutes he’s going to practice Bordogni. Five minutes he’ll practice soft playing. I had a similar plan. You can practice something too much and then you have no time to practice the rest of your material. 

The great thing about practicing is that you can always come back the next day and do the same thing. I think that’s important — the daily visits to a particular area. If you don’t accomplish your goal one day, there’s no need to panic. You always can come back the next day and try again.  By doing it on a daily basis — let’s say over two weeks — you can practice something for two hours. It’s actually better to practice something in a shorter amount of time, step away from it and then come back again later. Maybe even later in the day. 

Hit it hard.  Rest.  Get your mind get off of it and then come back later and try it again. 

What’s your favorite kind of music? What really speaks to you?

I love to listen to great jazz from bone players. I can name a ton of them. If I had to re-do my whole life, I would probably be a jazz trombone player. One of these days I’ll surprise people.  I’m going to show them that I can do it and do it well. 

What are some breakthroughs you’ve had in your playing? What techniques or elements gave you revelations along the way? What helped you improve the most? 

I would say a couple of things. 

One is doing regular, physical activity.  For me it’s swimming. Doing half a mile or a mile in the pool and then going to perform in a concert — that was a revelation for me, I would say.  Because you’re really relaxed after a good workout. 

Another one, I would say, is embouchure. There’s not nearly as much tension in my embouchure as there used to be. When you’re a young student, a lot of times you set the corners really firmly and probably overuse things. My father said to just think of the letter “M” and just have sort of a neutral feeling on your face. That’s helped tremendously. When you’re a young student, you just tend to overuse everything. Over time you eliminate things that you don’t need. 

What tips you can pass along to make sure that loud playing is still musical and pleasant? 

If you feel relaxed when you play at louder dynamics, then it usually sounds good. If you’re feeling strained anywhere, that’s going to translate into something out of control with the sound. That’s the best thing I can say about that. 

Phil Smith had a special way of playing that was very “singing”—  and anything he did was always done in a singing manner.

If you’re going to sing something loud, it still needs to sound beautiful.  In order for it to be meaningful, you don’t want it to lose the message. But if a vocalist overdoes it, it starts to sound like shouting.  That’s the analogy here between singing and brass playing.  It can never sound like you’re shouting.  It should sound like you’re singing and it should feel like your singing as well. 

You’ve taught at the Julliard school for over thirty years now, what’s your favorite thing about teaching there? 

The main reason why I like to teach there is that it’s a place where I can really, really let it all hang out. All my concepts and all my ideas.  I want the very best for every student that I teach there.  When I walk in the building at Julliard, I’m there to give everything I can to every student. Any knowledge that I can hand over — that's the place I do it in the most caring way. 

Of course, I teach other places and I give my advice and do it in a caring way, also, but I see these same students every week. My job is to train them to be the best that they can be. Every teacher’s hope is for their students to go out and be successful.

There was a gentleman who just won the principal trombone in Vancouver, Brian Wendell. You can tell he was ready to win something, because he had worked hard. He listened to what I said, and he did it in a way where he never questioned anything. He was very calm and quiet about it, and I like that. He was very interested, of course, but he was able to teach himself after a while.

Who was your favorite conductor to play under during your tenure at the NY Phil?

Probably Leonard Bernstein. He was an amazing man.  His countless recordings, TV shows and tours.  His way of explaining music at young people’s concerts. His amazing composing skills. He was the most famous conductor, I think, ever to live. Playing Mahler Third with him and the Mahler Seventh, and Mahler Two — that series. That was definitely a highlight of my career. 

Recently, I was doing Mahler Third with Bernard Haitink—

Regarding the solo…some conductors really want it a certain speed, but I liked Haitink’s approach. We kind of matched on that. 

Bernstein, a lot of the conductors follow you a bit, but I tend to do it a very predictable way. That was certainly a great experience. 

Another non-Philharmonic related experience was when London Symphony wanted me to do a concert with them at Carnegie Hall. I had just finished playing the Jim Pugh concerto, when I got the call.  Playing with Pierre Boulez, sitting next to Morris Murphy and the great brass section there, was wonderful.  We played Berg Three Pieces and the Mahler Sixth Symphony on the same concert. That was just great. 

Who is or was the greatest trombonist who never played in an orchestra?
Urbie Green.

What is the hardest solo you ever played with New York Phil?
Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto.

(Interviewers note:  You can read about the concerto here.  You can listen to the concerto here.)

What's your favorite Olympic sport?
Downhill skiing.

What's your biggest weakness on trombone?
My tongue.

Would you rather jump over 25 cars on a motorcycle or fly off a cliff in a wingsuit?
Fly off a cliff in a wingsuit.

What's your least favorite orchestral excerpt?
To play, probably William Tell.  To listen to, I would say Mahler Three.

What’s the best book you read in the last year?
Golf Digest.

What instrument would you play if you didn't have lips?
The cello.

What's one method book that you simply could not go without?
The Bordogni Vocalises.

What is the number one mistake you hear from players at an audition? 
Playing too loud. 

Does that hold true for trumpet, as well? Trumpet auditions?
Yes. Absolutely.

What's your favorite non-trombone instrument to listen to?
Probably sax. Baritone sax.

Who is your favorite violinist of all time?
Glenn Dicterow, our former concert master.

In a word, what is the golden key to Bolero? One word.
Rhythmic preparation. Oh, that was two words — Rhythm.

What's the most difficult style of music to play?
Maybe Latin.

If you could tell 16-year-old Joe Alessi one thing about trombone, what would it be? 
Sing more. 

If you could force Donald Trump to listen to one piece of music that might change his outlook on everything, what would it be? 
Silent Night.

What's your dream car?
911 Turbo.

(Interviewer’s note:  Same dream car as Arturo! - see our Brass Chats episode #1). 

Name the members of your dream brass quintet comprised of you and four other members.  Only players who are no longer living.
Arnold Jacobs, Gunther Schuler, probably Bud Herseth, Fred Mills.

Besides J.J. Johnson, who is the greatest jazz trombonist of all time?
Trummy Young.

If your story was to be told on the silver screen, in the movies, what actor would portray Joe Alessi?
James Gandolfini. 

If you could choose, what would be the final piece that you play on your final concert with the New York Phil?
Bolero.

From the world of sports or film or journalism or anything, name a person who people might be surprised to hear is one of your influences.
Clint Eastwood.

What are the three most important characteristics of a perfect embouchure? 
Correct positioning of the mouthpiece. 
1.  Not too high, not too low. 
2.  Not rolling in the bottom lip. 
3.  To have a puckered embouchure and not an embouchure that smiled too much.

On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...what?
A 911 Turbo. 

Among conductors that you haven’t yet played for, who would you most like to?
Simon Rattle.

Website
www.slidearea.com

The Alessi Seminar
The Alessi Seminar runs seven full days with daily masterclasses, orchestral sections, trombone quartets, trombone choir and recitals. This year's seminar runs from August 5-13, 2017 and will be held at the University of Oregon.
www.alessiseminar.com

Alessi Music Studios
Exclusive access to orchestral parts for each excerpt, complete with written commentary and tips for you to incorporate into your audition preparation process.
www.alessimusicstudios.com

Maria Leone Recordings
www.slidearea.com/marialeone

Please share your thoughts and/or this interview with others!

Monster skills: making lubes, long-distance milkshake consumption, wearing colorful pants, water-balloon popping, assembling egg tacos... the list goes on.

Monster shortcomings: manners.

We contact this big fancy famous musicians, con them into getting together with us ("Don't worry, it's just an interview, it'll just take a few minutes of your tiiiiime, we proooooomise!!"), then spring ridiculous ideas on them. 

"DANCE!! TOOT YOUR HORN FOR US!!"

"INVITE US INTO YOUR HOME SO WE CAN DEMAND OUTRAGEOUS TASKS OF YOU!!" 

"YOUR COFFEE IS TASTY!"

You'd think, with manners so egregiously poor, that we'd just never even get to the interview part.  The lesson?... I guess there's really no lesson – just wanted to say all that crap because what happens afterwards is usually a nice round 30-45 minutes of musical-learning-magic.

Enter Phil Snedecor.

That story above was about him and we did that—and his interview really IS magic.

Having trouble getting motivated today? Were you already about to procrastinate for the next half-hour?

Perfect. Make this your procrastination and watch your productivity soar afterwards. Guaranteed or no money back!

Enjoy.

Oh yeah, hey, he's a great writer too and you won't be sorry for checking out his stuff. Links below the video!

Phil Snedecor sits down with the Monster Oil dudes in a Brass Chat for the ages. We talk Arnold Jacobs, Mahler Miscues, why you should be a musician first and a trumpet player second, and much more in this fabulous trumpet interview. Enjoy!

• WATCH THE TEASER EPISODE - "'Trumpet Challenge' with Phil Snedecor" -  https://youtu.be/gq6SsN56EzA

• Purchase Phil’s Etude books - http://www.pasmusic.com/PAS_Music/Etude_Books.html

• Download a visual of the “air balancing” technique described by Phil at time marking 6:16.

• Listen to Phil playing several excerpts from his NEW “Lyrical Etudes for Trumpet, Volume 2”.

• Find Phil online - personal website, Washington Symphonic Brass website, Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn.

Thomas Brown:

Hey everybody welcome back to Brass Chats once again. Today we’re sitting down with a gentleman who teaches at the Hart School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut and he has played with pretty much every kind of ensemble you can think of including the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony and the Washington Symphonic Brass. Mr. Phil Snedecor. Thanks so much for being with us.

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I was playing well then, shortly thereafter I just kind of went back and forth between literally not being able to play anything and playing great.

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I fly to Chicago, I basically camp out on Arnold Jacobs doorstep. I go and see him at Ravinia like three weeks in a row. I was like Mr. Jacobs could you teach me? He’s like see me next week. He put me off for three weeks. He said that was the test to see if I really wanted to study with him. Then finally he got me in the door and did some things and tweaked what I was doing and basically kind of got me thinking down another path. I was fine for a while.

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So, I’m walking out of his studio and I go down there and I kind of look at those guys and I’m listening to them they’re sounding pretty good, there’s a little brass quartet. They were called the Brass Factory Brass and so I listened to them for a while and they were sounding pretty good and after they got done I said, you guys do this every day? They said well we do it every other day but on Tuesday this guy’s not going to be there so, you got a trumpet on your back, do you want to play. Like yeah. So, Tuesday I show up with my trumpet and I start playing with these guys and man it was a completely different world. I just forgot about how to play the trumpet and remember why I play the trumpet. Because all these people rushing by, there not like judging me. There like, just listening. So, we’re playing The Barber of Seville Overture, we’re playing William Tell and we’re playing all these crazy transcriptions and I’m having fun and it kind of got me out of it, temporarily.

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Five years ago, I also knew that and I kept thinking there’s got to be a different way because the old saying if you keep doing something the same way you’ll get the same results. At some point, I thought you know, there’s got to be a better way. So, I rebalanced my playing and now I use, I use air, but it’s constant supported air and it’s not blowing the crap out of the trumpet and you can’t possibly take this hole and stick it into this hole and blow the crap out of it and expect anything but massive back pressure right here and when I thought about that and I realized that that’s what Arnold Jacobs had been saying the whole time.

He did this thing called, he did this thing every time I went to his studio he said oh, do this, [blowing noise] he said that’s a lot of effort, not much air and then he’d say do this [breathing noise] he’d say that’s a lot of air, not much effort. You want as much like the second one as possible. So, I thought that meant go [blowing noise] into this small hole which actually created [blowing noise] this back pressure. Once I realized that since he’s a tuba player he could go [blowing noise] into his tuba mouthpiece and I can’t really do that in this hole and I rebalanced my air, everything’s so much easier.

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His was all about thinking about what product you wanted and he was so stubborn he wasn’t going to accept anything less out of himself or his students. He didn’t really know how to teach. Okay you have to rebalance this and you have to do that. He wasn’t for that. He wanted to just have the product in his mind.

For me I needed some rebalancing and I would do that at various points in my career but I really feel like I understand it now. I’m working with my students on it. It’s been amazingly successful with my students. I recognize this in my students now and I’m able to explain it and we also do this focal thing where we’re singing in falsetto so that you’re inside oral cavity is more well positioned to do this blow rather than just going just [blowing noise] and everybody, most people play [trumpet playing]. That’s their general and they go up and down from there right. So, I want their blow to be [trumpet playing] so when I wake you up at two in the morning and I stick a trumpet in your hand [trumpet playing] is where you go.

Okay, so [singing] and if you sing that note [singing] that is where you want to play the trumpet. So, if I want to play [trumpet playing] I can play that much easier if my center of my face is [trumpet playing] right. As opposed to [trumpet playing] right, everybody spends all day there, right. All their warm up there. And I tell my students [trumpet playing] to warm up in that register and make that the center of your…

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That makes a lot of sense because you can’t just let everything go to flab because it’s still got to be vibrant you know. He talked about loud far away. So, it’s like he’s playing loud [trumpet playing] so really loud, far away, so you’re hearing it from the next county but it’s still this vibrant energy and he demonstrated that for me. It’s amazing.

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I’ve got a lot of calls from tuba players wanting me to do the Low Etudes for Tuba Volume 2 so I really want to do that. But it’s fun to write these, I mean they’re just melodies. The cool thing is I don’t have to sit down and work out entire orchestral arrangements of these things or piano arrangements, I just write the melodies and in the end, that’s what we have fun doing as musicians, right. I always thought that etude books were way too technical. I mean with the obvious exceptions, and the ones that were the exceptions were the Longinotti and Shirla [ph] and things like that were fun to play and that’s why people played them year after year after year. I thought I want to write something like that so I guess I’ve done that, in that people are playing them.

Thomas Brown:

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I was like well I’m just going to go start playing. Then somebody’s going to hear it and start hiring me or I’m going, so I would go…

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People loved it and we played the next one and then pretty soon people started taking notice and we actually started a concert series at Saint Luke where we had that first concert, they started putting some money into it, we started getting a following, we started getting brass quintet and quartet and dectet gigs off of that, paid. So pretty soon we were the official brass players for the National Cathedral and the Shrine at the Catholic University and Saint Matthews Cathedral and things like that where they’re not just hiring a bunch of freelancers they’re hiring the Washington Symphonic Brass Quintet or a group of players from the Washington Symphonic Brass or the whole 17 piece Washington Symphonic Brass to come play this and I can pay these people because this money’s freed up because they want us. That’s work that wasn’t really there before, this is not just Christmas and Easter, these are events and things that wouldn’t normally have brass players but they want us because they’ve heard us in X, Y and Z situation. So, I’m actually making work for players.

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We bet lubes to doughnuts that you've never seen Chameleon played on a cornetto before  this. We'll even give you 12 to 1 odds. So...you know...if we win, you have to buy 1 bottle of valve oil from us, and if you win, we have to buy you a dozen doughnuts. In fact, you'd probably buy yourself the dozen doughnuts anyway because you can't be trusted around doughnuts. We understand. Once you go get your doughnuts, return right here and eat them in front of this month's Brass Chat, which (if you couldn't tell from the above link) was clearly one of the coolest subjects we have ever had. The guy is a genius and it was immensely enjoyable hearing his perspectives on life, music, trumpet, and tennis. Here ya go.

Word association time! You know how it works; I say a word, and you respond with the first thing that jumps to mind. Examples: Peanut Butter? Jelly. Star? Wars. Opera? She dies at the end. Okay...so....Louis Hanzlik? American Brass Quintet, Aspen, Juilliard, UCONN, Columbia Teacher's College ...yep, the list goes on. Today, it only takes 27 minutes and 14 seconds for you to become a better musician; what are you waiting for??? 

Adding handsomely to our stockpile of famously accomplished and otherworldly-good trumpet players in our Brass Chats Interview collection, this month we snared Tom Hooten, who sits in the principal trumpet chair for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. We were super lucky that he had time and energy for us (boy did he!) as the LA Phil swung through New York; the result was one of the most information-rich interviews we've done so far. From warming up and routine to excerpts and chops and beyond, Hooten spills it, and we all get to collect it—thanks to another worthy installment of Brass Chats. Enjoy!

You heard him for years with the Brecker Brothers (not sure where they got the name from...), you saw him tear up the town in Stoplight Jazz, now join us for a swim through the inner workings of the mind of trumpet legend Randy Brecker! We hung with Randy and his cats (animals, not jazzers) at his pad in Montauk, NY, and covered fundamentals, learning to improvise, great stories about all the famous cats (jazzers, not animals) he's played with, the legacy and history of the Brecker Brothers, and much more. 

David Krauss, principal trumpet of the Met Opera Orchestra in NYC, had a lot of great stuff to share: stories about taking lessons in Wynton Marsalis' apartment...an unfortunate and unmentionable pogo stick injury, his favorite place to play trumpet, and a few great stories—like the time he almost missed the biggest solo in opera right after he was hired. ...Also, pastrami. Lots of pastrami. Come hang! 

It's funny; this is a true story. So Vlad Lavrik is the principal trumpet of the Russian National Orchestra; he plays a mean horn and is actually a very fine conductor as well, and is exploring this passion very frequently at work and elsewhere. He being his fully Russian self, and us being us, we wanted to think of some funny things to bring up. Turns out, we're not that funny—but we did ask if Vladimir Putin knew where Mr. Lavrik was. He said no...BUT: we saw his FB feed about a week later, with a video of him receiving a special award for the Arts in Russia...from VLADIMIR PUTIN. Moral of that story? ...Vladimir Putin watches Brass Chats. How about that!