Oz meets Texas!

In May of 2015, two trombonists met at a trumpet workshop, no less...

They knew their lives had reached a new low, hanging around trumpeters and such...

They decided they MUST. TAKE. ACTION.

Introducing....

WORLDWIDE BONE

Oz meets Texas

Australian composer and trombonist Brendan Collins
Trombonist Chris Clark

Jazz Duet No. 1, by Brendan Collins

Sometimes you get lucky in life and run into people you just really have a great time with!  Brendan, in addition to being a talented trombonist, is a fantastic composer.  He has written a large amount of brass music, and continues to write interesting and fun compositions!  He has recently written a great quintet that Valor Brass hopes to perform this year.  I also took his Trombone Hymn for 4 trombones and recorded that with some friends this spring - that is a really beautiful piece.  Check out his music and give it a play!  

Brendan has generously offered to make his Jazz Duet available as a free download here on the site.  You can get it HERE.  Please take the time to join the email list on the site as well if you download the piece!

For the video, Brendan recorded the top line at home in Australia, and I recorded the bottom line and put the two together for the video.  It was great fun collaborating in this way.  We are already looking to do some more virtual projects together soon!  Virtual projects can yield REAL results...cool!

Enjoy.

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Brendan Collins: Two Motets for Four Trombones

Last May, on a trip to the ITG (yeah, that's right, trumpet conference) conference in Ohio, I had the chance to meet an Aussie composer named Brendan Collins.  Rex Richardson performed his Trumpet Concerto at the conference, and besides enjoying the piece a lot, Brendan is a great guy, and we may or may not have shared a few beers while in Columbus.  I shared a copy of our new Valor Brass CD with Brendan, and we continued our correspondence throughout the rest of 2015, and I got to know him a little better.  He's a trombone player as well, so he's got that going for him!  He teaches and composes in Australia, and is busy writing all kinds of new music.  This winter, he sent me a copy of a trombone quartet he wrote called Two Motets.  The first movement, Sacred, is just beautiful!  The 2nd movement has a very playful syncopated motif throughout the piece that is a lot of fun to play, and lays very well on the trombone (just as you would expect from a trombonist-turned-composer)!  Brendan mentioned he would love to hear a recording if I ever had a chance to play the piece, so with my ongoing interest in audio production, it seemed like a great opportunity to do a small project that would benefit both of us in multiple ways.   We made the recording in one short session with some fun and extremely informative mentoring from a new colleague of ours, Christian Amonson.  Christian runs his own audio and video production company called Arts Laureate, and is as enthusiastic about audio as he is knowledgeable.  Here's a cool video Christian made about a recent production Arts Laureate did... Hope you enjoy the quartet!