In 2012, I did a few projects with Tia Wortham, a bassoonist in the U.S. Navy Band, a soprano and a dear friend. One of those projects was an early version of one my own compositions with text by T.S. Eliot. I later had to change that text–which was adapted from his poem “Little Gidding.” The estate of T.S. Eliot did not want his poems set to music. “But!” I replied, “what about the Broadway musical Cats?” Haha. No…I didn’t actually bring that up to the estate. I wasn’t going to earn billions of dollars on my little composition like Andrew Lloyd Weber did with Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Instead, I re-texted the music. But I do still have a recording of the Eliot version of my piece, from when I presented a clinic at the Levine School of Music summer string camp in 2012. The pianist is John Healey.

I also performed a recital with Tia at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Virginia. In that recital, we performed Henry Purcell’s “To Arms” from the music he composed for Thomas Shadwell’s play, The Libertine. Here are some brief excerpts from that performance–brief, because I tried to edit out my bad notes! It’s hard to play note-perfect on the natural baroque trumpet. I enjoyed doing a careful “walk on” at the beginning, but I think this could be even more dramatic in my body language (less careful) if I tried this in the future.