Third day of recording

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.

Bryan and me

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.

Christian Amonson, founder and owner of Arts Laureate

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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A presentation at the ITG virtual conference

Yesterday, I had the honor to present a new composition of mine at the International Trumpet Guild Conference. Because of the pandemic, the ITG conference is virtual and hosted on the “accelevents” platform. Everything was pre-submitted and scheduled for airing at 9:30am EDT (7:30 for me in Mountain Time).

It was broadcast on time, with approximately 20 to 25 people “in attendance.” A few people made some nice comments, including Grant Peters, trumpet professor of Missouri State University and the current president of the ITG, my trumpeter/composer friend Doug Hedwig (who has written a new work for trumpet, voice, and piano that I will be recording this summer), and my friend Sarah Stoneback who is the trumpet professor at Montana State.

What the conference audience saw first was a video I made that explained the composition.

Then they saw a performance, recorded by Arts Laureate in 2017. Dr. Ina Mirtcheva Blevins is the pianist. The recording engineer was Neil Brown.

If you would like to know more about the piece (e.g., how you can get a copy of the sheet music or anything else), feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll get back to you!

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