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Tony Plog is an ex-trumpeter turned full-time composer. He’s best known for his Four Sketches for brass quintet as well as Three Miniatures for Tuba and piano.

JN: Tony, welcome to the podcast.

TP: Great to be with you.

JN: Get us up to speed, what is going on in your world right now?

TP: I’m in the last semester teaching at the Norwegian Music Academy. After that, I’m working on putting together an online coaching and teaching system that will start with Skype and move to Zoom or something like that. But basically I’m trying to compose as much as I can.

JN: What made you want to be primarily a composer rather than a performer?

TP: That’s a good one. I’m not exactly sure. When I was in college, I wrote a piece for brass quintet called Four Miniatures. It was less than 4 minutes long, so you get a sense of my maturity as a composer. I just started writing more and more ad I’ve always loved reading about artists and writers. I read a lot of biographies, a lot of histories. I just got into it more and more. As a trumpet player, one thing I always enjoyed was trying to explore the more philosophical side of the trumpet or of music, rather than the technical side.

So in 1989, I was in Berlin to play a couple of Christmas oratorios and a couple of recitals with organ. I had a free night and went to the local opera. They were performing Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which is one of my all-time favorite pieces. That was kind of a landmark evening for me, in fact I still have the program from it. One of the things I wrote on the program is, “I have to be a composer.” I knew that even if I fail as a composer, I can say that my profession is the same as Prokofiev. I was that ideal about the idea, and still am. I didn’t retire from the trumpet for another 10-11 years because I needed some financial stability, but that was the night that changed everything for me.

JN: I’ve spoken to a few former instrumentalists who are now composers or conductors. An overall theme from them is that one instrument isn’t enough for them. They want the full spectrum of music. So as a trumpet player in an orchestra, there’s only so much you can do because it’s just one part of many.

TP: One of the great thrills of playing in an orchestra is if you’re playing a Mahler symphony, for example, you come into that final page and there’s such a great feeling. You’re playing pieces that have been played over and over, but the reason they’re played so often is they’re masterpieces. So you’re spending every day in the company of “immortals.” I was lucky enough to do a lot of solo and chamber playing as well, but something I started to realize was that although I tried to have a philosophical approach to the trumpet, the instruennt was more outside myself.

 

One of the things I love about the trumpet is the friends I’ve made playing it around the world. That’s more of an outer benefit of playing music. For me, composing is more me going inside the music. I’m battling and trying to overcome my limitations. Technical, emotional, psychological limitations, what have you. So that’s challenging for me as well.

JN: You already mentioned Prokofiev. Who else has influenced you as a composer?

TP: My first big influence was William Schmidt. He was a LA based composer and publisher. He wrote a huge number of works for brass. At one time, I sat down and realized that I had premiered 15 works of his. So here’s a prolific composer, a wonderful publisher. I worked a lot with his wife, Sharon Davis. She was a pianist so we did a lot of touring together.

In terms of influences after him, probably just about everyone. If you sit in an orchestra, you just soak everything in. So Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Mahler rise to the top for me, but I think I’m influenced by everyone I’ve ever hea...