It was freshman year at the University of Delaware and I was a first-year music education major, majoring on trumpet. I was in the wings of Mitchell Hall, waiting with my accompanist, Charlotte Joslin, to walk out and play my first trumpet jury. As I stood there, I wished I was holding my double bass and reflected on how I got to this moment.
I knew how to play trumpet and had played lots of gigs on trumpet through my high school years, but I was no stellar classical trumpet player. I was an accurate sight reader and more of a jazz or pop player rather than a classical player.
My trumpet heroes were Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Miles Davis, Snooky Young, Marvin Stamm, and Chet Baker.
Each of them had different, distinctive approaches to their instrument and sounded very different than the classical model of tone, Maurice André .
My start on trumpet was atypical.
A Thing Happened on My Way to Mitchell Hall
As a child, by fourth grade, I had large protruding upper teeth.
My mother took me to the orthodontist who had an interesting observation after my appointment.
“I've seen this sort of thing before. You have two options, Mrs. Holmes. The first one is your son gets braces. Second is he learns how to play trumpet.”
My mother was puzzled as she tried to remember if it was trumpet or clarinets that I wanted to play.
She asked the orthodontist “How much will the braces run?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 to $2,500.”
“And do have any idea how much trumpets run?”
The orthodontist shrugged.
“I've heard you can get them for about $125.”
My mom thought for a moment.
“We’ll get back to you on the braces.”
And within a week, I had a brand new used trumpet.
I started taking lessons that summer with Mr. Zollie, a gruff tenor sax player who sounded like Vido Musso and had an Italian marching band that played in the Little Italy area of our town. He also played in bars and roadside joints and specialized in a rock sound that lent itself to him standing on the bar and walling away on “Night Train”.
He had Polaroids to prove it. There he was, channeling his inner Louis Prima, playing his tenor over his head, standing on a bar, with adoring people club patrons holding their Schlitz in wonderment at his musical prowess.
Seemed legit to me.
I never heard Mr. Zollie ever play an instrument that summer. He didn't know how to play trumpet. But he knew how to follow my “A Tune a Day” beginning trumpet book and had a lot of confidence that I would be able to play.
The problem was my teeth. They still painfully cut into my upper lip when I played.
As I would put that 7C mouthpiece up to my mouth and blow, my spit valve ran blood red. I had horrendously bad tone, so much so that when I practiced in my room at home and suddenly stopped, I could hear my parents laughing downstairs.
One day in fifth grade, it all clicked. I'm assuming that my teeth had moved enough so that the overtone series fell into place.
The summer before my freshman year, my band director told me that starting as a freshman, I was going to learn how to play tuba because I was the tallest brass player going into ninth grade and wouldn’t drop it.
I was game.
Before I left the director’s office, he stopped me and said, “Oh, and by the way, you're also going to learn how to play upright double bass.”
I frowned and asked why would I want to do that.
He smiled.
“Because you will be able to play in orchestra and orchestra has thirty-seven members with only four boys.”
I quickly revise my thinking.
“Yeah, that double bass does sound pretty good.”
I ended up studying double bass privately and learned how to make a significant amount of money playing it, from Dixieland gigs to folk mass gigs to pit bands to jazz trios.
When I arrived at the University of Delaware to audition on double bass, one of my auditioners, their trumpet instructor, knew that I play trumpet.
Even though I had brought my upright bass to my college audition, he feigned ignorance and asked “It says on your form here that you also know how to play trumpet. Can you play something for us today on trumpet?”
I responded with “Well, I don't have my trumpet with me and I haven't really prepared anything.”
He smiled.
“Well, I just happen to have a trumpet break here. Why don't you play something from memory.”
So I picked the most obnoxious piece of music that I had memorized, something that I really did not enjoy playing, but I could play fairly well, and I hope it would say to them that I didn't have any taste in music.
I played the first trumpet part from Leroy Anderson’s “Bugler's Holiday”.
By measure eight, both evaluators from the University exclaimed, “You’re in!”
As soon as they said that, I knew I should have played Herb Alpert’s “Spanish Flea”.
The reason they were pushing me to play trumpet was economic. While the university had a student orchestra, they did not have a string program at the time.
If the department I had decided that I could be a double bass major, they would have had to pay out-of-pocket for my out-of-house private study, and that was not happening.
Everything about music at Delaware revolved around marching band, PR image, and the money it drew from alums who were deeply committed to the rah-rah football experience.
The school didn't want a string program that would siphon any talent or budget away from the music department’s wind and percussion contingent.
Thankfully that this changed over the years.
I played in string orchestra for several years.
Some years I played tuba in marching band; some years, trumpet.
I also played second trumpet in the jazz ensemble because the second chair was the improvising chair.
Marching band and jazz ensemble performed some of my arrangemts and one of my compositions was performed at a senior recital.
At that time, I was the only major who was doing those things.
I loved being versatile.
So here I was standing in the wings at Mitchell Hall, the primary performance Hall on the University campus, my first freshman trumpet jury moments away.
To be concluded in “Lessons from a Trumpet Jury or a Thing Happened on My Way to Mitchell Hall - Part Two”
I knew how to play trumpet and had played lots of gigs on trumpet through my high school years, but I was no stellar classical trumpet player. I was an accurate sight reader and more of a jazz or pop player rather than a classical player.
My trumpet heroes were Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Miles Davis, Snooky Young, Marvin Stamm, and Chet Baker.
Each of them had different, distinctive approaches to their instrument and sounded very different than the classical model of tone, Maurice André .
My start on trumpet was atypical.
A Thing Happened on My Way to Mitchell Hall
As a child, by fourth grade, I had large protruding upper teeth.
My mother took me to the orthodontist who had an interesting observation after my appointment.
“I've seen this sort of thing before. You have two options, Mrs. Holmes. The first one is your son gets braces. Second is he learns how to play trumpet.”
My mother was puzzled as she tried to remember if it was trumpet or clarinets that I wanted to play.
She asked the orthodontist “How much will the braces run?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 to $2,500.”
“And do have any idea how much trumpets run?”
The orthodontist shrugged.
“I've heard you can get them for about $125.”
My mom thought for a moment.
“We’ll get back to you on the braces.”
And within a week, I had a brand new used trumpet.
I started taking lessons that summer with Mr. Zollie, a gruff tenor sax player who sounded like Vido Musso and had an Italian marching band that played in the Little Italy area of our town. He also played in bars and roadside joints and specialized in a rock sound that lent itself to him standing on the bar and walling away on “Night Train”.
He had Polaroids to prove it. There he was, channeling his inner Louis Prima, playing his tenor over his head, standing on a bar, with adoring people club patrons holding their Schlitz in wonderment at his musical prowess.
Seemed legit to me.
I never heard Mr. Zollie ever play an instrument that summer. He didn't know how to play trumpet. But he knew how to follow my “A Tune a Day” beginning trumpet book and had a lot of confidence that I would be able to play.
The problem was my teeth. They still painfully cut into my upper lip when I played.
As I would put that 7C mouthpiece up to my mouth and blow, my spit valve ran blood red. I had horrendously bad tone, so much so that when I practiced in my room at home and suddenly stopped, I could hear my parents laughing downstairs.
One day in fifth grade, it all clicked. I'm assuming that my teeth had moved enough so that the overtone series fell into place.
The summer before my freshman year, my band director told me that starting as a freshman, I was going to learn how to play tuba because I was the tallest brass player going into ninth grade and wouldn’t drop it.
I was game.
Before I left the director’s office, he stopped me and said, “Oh, and by the way, you're also going to learn how to play upright double bass.”
I frowned and asked why would I want to do that.
He smiled.
“Because you will be able to play in orchestra and orchestra has thirty-seven members with only four boys.”
I quickly revise my thinking.
“Yeah, that double bass does sound pretty good.”
I ended up studying double bass privately and learned how to make a significant amount of money playing it, from Dixieland gigs to folk mass gigs to pit bands to jazz trios.
When I arrived at the University of Delaware to audition on double bass, one of my auditioners, their trumpet instructor, knew that I play trumpet.
Even though I had brought my upright bass to my college audition, he feigned ignorance and asked “It says on your form here that you also know how to play trumpet. Can you play something for us today on trumpet?”
I responded with “Well, I don't have my trumpet with me and I haven't really prepared anything.”
He smiled.
“Well, I just happen to have a trumpet break here. Why don't you play something from memory.”
So I picked the most obnoxious piece of music that I had memorized, something that I really did not enjoy playing, but I could play fairly well, and I hope it would say to them that I didn't have any taste in music.
I played the first trumpet part from Leroy Anderson’s “Bugler's Holiday”.
By measure eight, both evaluators from the University exclaimed, “You’re in!”
As soon as they said that, I knew I should have played Herb Alpert’s “Spanish Flea”.
The reason they were pushing me to play trumpet was economic. While the university had a student orchestra, they did not have a string program at the time.
If the department I had decided that I could be a double bass major, they would have had to pay out-of-pocket for my out-of-house private study, and that was not happening.
Everything about music at Delaware revolved around marching band, PR image, and the money it drew from alums who were deeply committed to the rah-rah football experience.
The school didn't want a string program that would siphon any talent or budget away from the music department’s wind and percussion contingent.
Thankfully that this changed over the years.
I played in string orchestra for several years.
Some years I played tuba in marching band; some years, trumpet.
I also played second trumpet in the jazz ensemble because the second chair was the improvising chair.
Marching band and jazz ensemble performed some of my arrangemts and one of my compositions was performed at a senior recital.
At that time, I was the only major who was doing those things.
I loved being versatile.
So here I was standing in the wings at Mitchell Hall, the primary performance Hall on the University campus, my first freshman trumpet jury moments away.
To be concluded in “Lessons from a Trumpet Jury or a Thing Happened on My Way to Mitchell Hall - Part Two”
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