Être Ou Ne Pas Être, by Henri Tomasi (Daniel Brady, bass trombone soloist)

There are a few pieces that, whenever you get the chance to perform them, are just always a treat. The thing that makes them a bright spot, to me, is the musical ideas available to us, and the many choices the performers can make. With a piece like this perennial favorite by Henri Tomasi, we always have a new way to try, or different ideas decided on by the group, and a different soloist to support.

The Marine Band has a fairly prolific chamber music series, in both fall and winter, and many of the Band’s musicians really look forward to a chance to perform on these recitals. To me, there is nothing more enjoyable as a musician than chamber music. You have some of challenges of solo playing, but you get the fun of teamwork with your friends in the chamber ensemble on top of it. As a trombonist, you are often the only trombone in chamber music settings which gives you a chance to be a solo voice more frequently, and to contribute your unique sound to the ensemble.

While this piece is, essentially, a trombone quartet, Tomasi does a remarkable job of showcasing what a trombone section can do, and he does so in a very theatrical way. Of course, with a title drawn from Shakespeare, it darn well better be theatrical!

We made a couple of musical choices that I hope you enjoy…. I always see this piece performed in a more or less standard “four bones across” quartet setup. We opted to put the soloist in the center, with the trio off to the side and farther away, with the idea that we could serve more as a commentary to the solo voice, possibly more Shakespearean, but who knows? It was fun to do something different! We also opted for some fast slide vibrato where Tomasi indicates vibrato in the score, to give a shimmering effect with a different texture.

We performed this piece on a Marine Band chamber series concert, and then decided we wanted to have some more fun recording it. This is the result of a single late night session capturing our musical take (this time) on this trombone favorite.

I am always thrilled to play with my colleagues in the Marine Band, and this piece is no exception. Besides Daniel’s stellar bass trombone playing, Christopher Reaves and Tim Dugan covered the tenor trombone parts with me, and we had a great time doing it! Also, Will Samson was indispensable running the recording rig and taking notes on our various takes….thanks, Will!

Posaune Decuple, Live at the Glencairn Museum

Last April, Posaune Decuple, the trombone super group formed by the late Glenn Dodson, played a concert at the beautiful Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. The video excerpt is from a very interesting piece from Brazilian composer, Fernando Deddos.

I give thanks... for tape transfers! (Students of Neill Humfeld, you will want to read... ;)

I have many things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  A wonderful, healthy family, colleagues that are the absolute best to work with, and a job that I love.  However, on the music front, one thing stands out to me this November that I didn’t see coming, even a month ago.

I have previously written about my teacher, Dr. Neill Humfeld, and his influence on me, and a little about his musicianship and teaching.  When Dr. Humfeld passed, my dad and I came into possession of a couple boxes of analog tape (the reel to reel kind) containing all kinds of recordings of Dr. H from many years of recitals and concerts.  It has been one of those things that  I look at and say, “man, we really gotta get that transferred so we can listen to it!”  I never knew what that entailed, or how you would even go about doing it, until recently...

Fast forward to the past year, where my own interest in audio, especially in producing and preserving live performances, has come into play.  This fall, coincidentally, I have been taking a course online through Berklee College of Music called Audio Mastering, taught by an expert engineer, Marc Dieter-Einstmann (check out Marc’s mastering studio HERE).  Mastering is the final step in the production process for any audio recording.  A recording gets made (live or in studio), and then gets mixed.  In the mixing stage, the mix engineer takes all the audio that was recorded (sometimes as many as 100 tracks or more), and essentially places all those voices in the stereo field (where you locate that sound when you hear the recording) and gives the recording it’s tonal shape, and many other musical variables that make a certain record sound unique.  In mastering, the engineer takes the fully mixed recording and puts the finishing touches on it.  These can be musical or tonal adjustments (maybe something the mix engineer missed or didn’t hear), technical corrections (bad edits, noise removal), and general quality control.  Finally, a mastering engineer will set the loudness level of the recording, and produce a “master” containing all the tracks of the album, in the correct order, and with great care to ensure there are no functional errors.  

To hear these performances come back to life, after over 50 years for some of them, is truly a delight.  To hear Dr. Humfeld’s sound, in performances I’ve never heard before, is truly something to be thankful for.  

So, what to do with these?  Well, after speaking with Dr. Humfeld’s daughter, Nancy Jo Humfeld, I would like to continue to transfer more of these recitals and create a “BEST OF” album of Dr. Humfeld’s recitals over the years.  On many of these tapes, he speaks at length to the audience about the music he performs, and many of the recordings reflect his warm sense of humor that many of us came to love from knowing him.  

Stay tuned, there is much more to come.  I plan to make this project a major focus of my 2019.  

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.  May you all be blessed to love, make music, and enjoy the people in our lives that are important to us!

Does YOUR engineer run a backup???

You have probably heard the old adage, “Two is one, one is none”. Or maybe another thing my mom used to say to me, “better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

How does that apply to the recording arts? And what does it mean?

I have had the pleasure of getting to know, and learn from, some excellent engineers over the past few years. Backing up computer data, and audio files, is always on their minds. File management, and being able to FIND the audio you’ve recorded, and avoid unnecessary duplication of tracks is a large topic. For the engineers I’ve learned from, it all starts with the initial capture at the live concert or session. Both Christian Amonson and Mike Ducassoux have different systems, but they both serve the need to stave off any visit from Mr. Murphy very well.

So, after listening to these gentlemen for a good amount of time, I decided it would be prudent to incorporate some of their methods in to my own workflow. So, I took their advice and developed my own backup system.

A backup system is, simply, a 2nd recording that runs in parallel to the primary recording equipment. In my case, my microphones run into both my laptop, as well as a Zoom 8-channel SD recorder. Why does this matter? Well, in case of catastrophic laptop failure, the Zoom captures the source audio, even if my laptop is turned off completely.

So, when you book an engineer to record your concert, ask them, “do you have backup”? If their answer is “no”, give me a call! ;)