On the third day of recording, there was only one piece on the docket: James David’s Moonwatcher. A colleague, Jim is the composition professor at CSU. He has written many interesting things for trombone and band and many other genres. For instance, here is his Bright Window with Joseph Alessi on trombone:

But Moonwatcher is his first solo piece for trumpet. It’s a three-movement work for trumpet and piano–much like a sonata.  Each movement is inspired by a moon-related mythological being from different cultures. This summer, he has also written a piece for trumpet and electronics called Sketches in Red Clay, commissioned for the Next Generation Trumpet Competition.

I had set aside the whole day, yesterday, for recording this 14-minute piece, because there are some technical and musical details that require attention, plus the second movement calls for delicate and virtuosic flugelhorn playing. The pianist for Moonwatcher was my CSU colleague, piano professor Bryan Wallick, who was fantastic to collaborate with on this piece. Also, Bryan is a very calm and reassuring personality that really helped make the recording day go smoothly, in spite of a lot of retakes for trumpet technique or soft entrances.

Once again Christian Amonson, our recording engineer (and the owner of Arts Laureate), was fantastic not only with his recording abilities but also with his ability to hear what we were doing and urge us on to really great sounding takes.

Here are some more photos from Tuesday’s recording of Kevin Poelking’s Cassini (working with CSU percussion professor, Eric Hollenbeck and CSU piano senior instructor, Tim Burns) and a few of yesterday’s work on Moonwatcher.

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