The Comeback Kid (Sort Of), Part 2

| Jul 21, 2019 |

When I retired from playing in June, 2001, I assumed that after a few months I would not be able to play a note on the trumpet. That turned out to be a false assumption: even after a few months of retirement I could still do a warmup with a sound that was… well, if it wasn’t great, at least it sounded like a trumpet.

So, when doing master classes, I could almost always demonstrate a warmup reasonably well. But of course there was no high register or endurance. I learned there were certain things I hadn’t lost in my playing. (Fingering was, if anything, improved.) Other things, however, became almost exponentially more problematic and difficult. (I had always had a slow single tongue but felt I was smart enough as a player to hide that deficiency. It was no longer true.)

That was the state of my playing when Maria Bengtsson asked if I would perform the Handel Eternal Source this past summer. It was the beginning of a three-month journey in which I tried to relearn how to play the trumpet—or at least relearn how to play the trumpet for one piece.

I began by doing easy warmups—5-10 minutes in the morning and the same in the evening. By the time of the concert I had worked up to a 50-minute session in the morning and evening. Almost all my practice consisted of a soft, slow, easy warmup with only a little tonguing. (The Handel has no real tonguing, and my goal was not to be a good trumpet player but rather a trumpet player who could play well on one piece in one concert.)

I realize that I’m simply an experiment of one, but here are a few things that I learned. On the positive side, as mentioned previously, my fingers were if anything better than before. (I had always had trouble with the low A-major passage in the Clarke study #2, and to my amazement it was now easier). And my sound seemed okay as well. But on the negative side, response was a continual problem and one I was not really able to solve. I simply couldn’t be sure if a note would “speak” in the upper-middle to high register. I was never able to completely solve that problem, but I did learn that when it happened, it seemed to be because my aim for a certain note was just a bit too high. As a result, I learned to readjust and aim lower than I used to. Why this was the case I have absolutely no idea. But that became a guiding principle in working on this problem.

Having learned a slightly new way of playing, I felt as if I had at least a chance of making things work on the concert. And then I heard Maria sing at the first rehearsal and, wow, she showed me a whole new level of dynamic control, musicality, and emotion. It was stunning to hear her sing, and I found that I had conflicting feelings—honored to be working with such a great artist and good friend, but… what in the hell am I doing here?

Now that our concert is over, I realize that, besides grappling with physical challenges, I also learned a few things about the mental aspect of performance and, more importantly, about life choices and priorities.