I love this quote from Brian Eno... (via Austin Kleon)

If you've followed my site for any length of time, you know my fondness for Austin Kleon and his wonderful books, Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work.  Kleon writes a lot about music and all things arts-related, and his Tumblr and Twitter feed are great resources to add to your daily social media feed.  He posted this quote by Brian Eno this year, and it really hits home when I relate it to my own feelings while being on US Marine Band tours, and shorter tours with Valor Brass... Great insight from the life of a rock star!

 I noticed that touring — which is wonderful in some ways — is absolutely confining in other ways.  It’s so difficult… you just can’t think about anything else. You try your hardest: You take books with you and word processors, and you’re definitely going to do something with the time. And you never do. It’s so easy for it to become your exclusive life, this one and a half hours every evening that you play. And I just thought, “I’m losing touch with what I really like doing.” What I really like doing is what I call Import and Export. I like taking ideas from one place and putting them into another place and seeing what happens when you do that. I think you could probably sum up nearly everything I’ve done under that umbrella. Understanding something that’s happening in painting, say, and then seeing how that applies to music. Or understanding something that’s happening in experimental music and seeing what that could be like if you used it as a base for popular music. It’s a research job, a lot of it. You spend a lot of time sitting around, fiddling around with things, quite undramatically, and finally something clicks into place and you think, ”Oh, thats really worth doing.” The time spent researching is a big part of it. I never imagined a pop star life that would’ve permitted that. 

Brian Eno

"Excuse me, sir? What should I do if I want to make it as a trombone player?"

   Blind Boys of Alabama   Moog factory tour

  Playing with fun toys 

 At a concert the other day, a young man approached me at intermission and, literally, asked me the question above.... 

After I said, "practice", I asked him if he listens to a lot of music.  He said, "not really."

Now, I will admit that I wasn't surprised to find a young player that doesn't listen to a lot of trombone recordings. However, I was surprised that someone who doesn't listen much did have the curiosity to ask the question in the first place. 

It is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that you, as an aspiring musician, listen to as muc music as your ears and brain can stand. Preferably music that is directly related to the styles in which you want to be fluent. If you play the trombone, and you tell me you've never heard a recording by Joe Alessi, Christian Lindberg, or JJ Johnson, then you have some serious work to do!  I discussed with the young man where he might go to hear great performers: YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc., and most of it for free!  

The fact of the matter is, you will play the sounds you have in your head. If you can hear it, then you can proceed towards reproducing that sound. 

Second, you should be listening to music that you might think doesn't interest you. Over the past two weeks, I did two things that were eye openers for me: I toured the Moog synthesizer factory in Asheville, NC, and I heard the Blind Boys of Alabama while we were in Birmingham. The Moog tour was interesting because our tour guide, besides giving us a great overview of the history of Moog, pointed me towards some fantastic musicians and bands whose work I discovered I really enjoy, such as Deltron 3030 and Dan the Automator. Those are bands and music styles I would have NEVER discovered on my own!  Likewise, the Blind Boys of Alabama do play a style of music that I already enjoy, gospel, but their live show was so much more than that. Backed by an absolutely fantastic 4-piece band, they played gospel, soul, country, rock, and put on a live show that was as entertaining as it was musically amazing!

So, listen, listen, listen. No excuses!  That is, IF you want to improve and broaden your horizons.... :)

Yours virtually,

Chris

Blind Boys of Alabama Bombassic Deltron 3030

The Virtual Trombonist Podcast, ep. 1: An interview with John Ohnstad

In the summer of 1993, I had the great fun and opportunity to work at Disney World as part of the All-American College Orchestra, performing at Epcot.  One of my colleague was a bass trombonist named John Ohnstad.  John was an interesting guy.  He was a fantastic musician, but wasn't a music major in college at all!  John has continued his parallel paths in both business and music, and we recently caught up at a reunion of our College Orchestra pals in Orlando.  I sat down to talk a bit with John about how he arrived at his musical career, and to also hear about his unique experiences studying with the late George Roberts. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/220684998" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

John performs with a number of groups in and around Portland, here are some links to a few of them:

Rose City Trombones

Big Horn Brass

Portland Columbia Symphony

Art Abrams Swing Machine Big Band - and on their album "Speak Low/Swing Hard"

Selling the Digital Experience

So today I find myself on a bus for a better part of the day, and with lots of time on my hands, children at daycare, and an electrical outlet for my phone charger, I'm doing what any technology junkie would do:  spending the entire drive catching up on articles and video that I've bookmarked! One thing I keep coming back to is the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. The folks in Berlin have done something very smart by outfitting the Philharmonie with a professional television studio and rigging their setup to broadcast all of their concerts live in HD. Another brilliant thing they've done is to feature the talents of Sarah Willis, fourth horn in the orchestra. Besides being a fabulous musician and having her own very successful "horn hangouts" online, Sarah has done a number of interviews that are accessible on the digital concert hall. The Philharmonic recently performed a program featuring a new work for trumpet and orchestra by HK Gruber called Aerial.  The soloist was Hakan Hardenburger, for whom the piece was written. I got sucked in to watching an interview that Ms. Willis conducted with Hakan and the program's conductor, Andris Nelsons. I'll just get right to the point, the interview, and Mr. Hardenburger's insight into the process of playing and learning the piece was so fascinating, that I immediately bought a 7-day pass for the digital concert hall and watched the program on my long bus ride. What an amazing concert, soloist, and orchestra!

It's no surprise to anyone that an online digital presence is the future of classical music. Berlin has done it right. Not only can you watch live concerts in HD with fantastic audio quality, but they have an amazing back catalog of concerts, interviews with soloists and conductors, and documentaries about the orchestra.  Know I will be binge-watching quite a lot of Berlin Philharmonic concerts over the next 7-days!

As we enter fully the era of constant connectivity and faster internet connections, this type of experience is only going to become more prevalent for all musicians.  People fret that the Internet and mobile technology is going to make everyone more detached from their audience. Using the talents of Ms. Willis as an example, I don't think this could be further from the truth! What is now clearly critical is having the ability and desire to speak to an audience, conduct an interview, and otherwise engage people in a personal and informative way.  Oh! It's those people skills my parents used to always talk to me about!

I feel fortunate the U.S. Marine Band has begun to live stream many of our own concerts. The band also has some very cool projects on line now, with my favorite being the recording and release of free PDF parts and scores for every March John Philip Sousa ever wrote!  Their adding enough that the band is hiring a third full time audio engineer as well. 

Ok, back to my looong bus ride and my digital concert hall ticket!  If it seems I'm being secretive about where I'm headed, then well, I am!  The Marines don't do anything the easy way, and today is no exception. More about our trip later when the cat is out of the bag!