Blue Lake in Bavaria

Summer Stock Theatre (Northern Indiana)

American Wind Symphony Orchestra (The "Barge Band")

Aspen Music Festival

This summer I took my children to Disneyland Paris for our vacation, and one evening we heard a brass brand performing in a gazebo.  Sadly, this group did not have any horn players, but it made me think of all the summer music experiences I have had and how they shaped my horn playing and my life.

In high school I had the chance to go to Europe with Blue Lake (Michigan) in Bavaria.  The band was made up of 50% Americans and 50% Europeans.  We stayed with host families and had an amazing time.  It was my first taste of European culture, from a musical perspective, and a glimpse into my own future, although I didn't know it at the time.  I had visited Spain the previous year, but with the spanish club and with no horn in sight.  But, with college arriving, and needing funds for college I had to work the next few summers.  I auditioned and got jobs with two very different ensembles while in undergraduate school.

The first was with a Summer Stock Theatre company in Indiana.  The "orchestra" consisited of three strings, three woodwinds, three brass, drum set and piano.  We slept in a dormitory set up with the actors and rehearsed and performed 4 or 5 different shows for 4 weeks.  I even got to play my brother's trumpet for a fanfare because we needed two trumpets, and I proposed playing the second trumpet part on a trumpet instead of on horn.  That summer was a real learning curve.  I had to read trombone and trumpet parts (transposing in C bass clef and B-flat trumpet parts) and it was a blast.  We even got to be in some of the shows as extras.  I remember playing a part in costume and then running on stage for my bit and the running back to the "pit" to finish playing in the orchestra.  I learned a lot about what it means to be a struggling artist.  I met actors in their 50's moving from one summer job to another trying to make ends meet, while I, 19 years old, was learning anything I could about being a professional horn player.  I think that it was here that I first really understood what it meant to be a professional musician.

My next experience was the strangest.  The American Wind Symphony Orchestra.  Also known as "The Barge Band".  This wind ensemble performed concerts on a barge which transformed into a stage shell and closed when it moved to the next venue.  We started in Pittsburgh and followed the Ohio river to the Mississippi and then north to Stillwater, Minnesota.  We also performed chamber music (brass and woodwind quintets).  We stayed with host families and travelled in vans from one location to another following the barge downriver.  It was fun and a very unusual gig.  Our first concert was with Dizzy Gillespie in Pittsburgh, which was the highlight of the whole summer.  This, like the summer stock theatre job, was a real job.  Real performance standards were expected and the conductor was not always the easiest to work with, but that was the reason to do it.  To learn.

The biggest experience came the next year.   The American Brass Quintet came to my school, Western Michigan University, to perform and give master classes. Having grown up in the midwest I had always had a connection to the sound of orchestras like the Chicago Symphony, but when I heard David Wakefield play a Conn 8D I realized that my feelings about orchestras and players with that instrument were completely wrong.  My closed mind opened.  Later my teacher (Johnny Pherigo) suggested that I go to Aspen to study with Mr. Wakefield for 1 summer.  Only later did I realize that they had hatched a plan between them, but more on that later.  If it had not been for a bond that my Grandmother had left me I would never had been able to go to Aspen.  It was very, very expensive.  I packed the car and drove 2 days to Colorado.  I had started horn with Neill Sanders and had always played one of his mouthpieces.  I never considered playing anything else, but during that summer David Wakefield and I changed my mouthpiece.  In the middle of playing and working I made the most radical change of my horn playing life.  I went from a 17D Sanders mouthpiece to a Schilke 30.  Although the mouthpiece below is not a Schilke 30 it does give a good impression of the change I made in a couple of weeks.  The photo comes from the hornmouthpiece.com website.