The Comeback Kid (Sort Of), Part 1

| Jul 21, 2019 |

I am a retired trumpet player. Writing this statement feels different than it would have before July 9, 2019. Until that day I had been retired for 18 years. (My last concert was with the Summit Brass in June, 2001, after which I became a full-time composer and teacher.) But on July 9, after years of retirement, I played a concert. Or, to be more accurate, I played one piece on a concert: Handel’s Eternal Source, with Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson and pianist Tamami Honma.

This happened because Maria has been a close family friend for years. She was an au pair for my sister-in-law in Montauk, New York, when she was 17 (her first trip to the U.S.). Then, as a first-year student at the Musik Hochshule in Freiburg, Germany, Maria lived with my wife Cathy and me and our one-year-old daughter Kelsey, helping with babysitting among other things. It’s funny how life works, but Kelsey is now getting her master’s degree in voice at that same Musik Hochschule and is also a soprano.

Maria, meanwhile, has become an opera star, with leading roles at La Scala, Vienna, Berlin, and throughout Europe. She received a 2017 nomination as soprano singer of the year from Opera Magazine. But she had never performed in the United States, and so it was arranged that she would premiere my song cycle God’s First Temples (text by John Muir) at Stanford University as part of a full recital, sponsored and promoted by Michael Fried and Planet Earth Arts. So far, so good.

But then… but then… Maria said she wanted to do Eternal Source. I told her, "Great. There are some fantastic trumpet players in San Francisco." She replied, "No. I want to do it with you. We have never performed together." Long story short: I played that one piece on that one concert. Then, as of about 7:45 on the evening of July 9, I went back into retirement.

That’s the basic story of what happened. Parts 2 and 3 of this post will explain what I experienced in the process of relearning to play the trumpet, both the physical act of playing and the psychological aspect of preparing and then performing in public. It was a fascinating journey that taught me a lot, and I am truly honored that I was able to play with an artist of Maria’s stature.