Today was my last day in China.  The other guest artists were on very early flights and mine did not leave till 5:30pm so I had the day to myself.  I basically retraced the steps of my first day here a week ago.  It was interesting how much more comfortable I have become over just seven days.  I did some shopping and even haggled over a price! My initial reflection on my time here has been…

Today one of CCOM tuba students’ took Marty Erickson and me to the Great Wall.  It was a wonderful experience even though the sky was very foggy.  There are many points that tourists can enter the Wall and the one we took was supposedly the most difficult.  I would have to say that it wasn’t so much a great wall as a great staircase!  I don’t know what the ascent was in feet but it was…

This afternoon I gave a four-hour master class to the CCOM middle school trumpet students.  There were about 15 students around the age of 14-18. First we went through some warm-up concepts together as a class.  Then I talked about putting music into different categories in order to help you focus on intent and be more efficient in your practice.  The categories I discussed were solo…

After a morning of practicing, our host, Fan Lei treated us all to another amazing lunch.  I had turtle, venison, goose, manta ray and an amazing ginseng soup!  He has assigned three of his students to chaperone the four guests around throughout the week and these students have already become great friends.  At least one has been with all of us at all times.  None of the Americans that are here…

Today was the day of my solo recital.  I had a dress rehearsal followed by lunch at a local hotspot. After that some much needed downtime till the concert.  The first portion of the program was by tuba great, Marty Erickson.  He plays with amazing control and confidence.  It also seems that he never actually gets tired! My program was: “Tromba Sola” Ketil Hvoslef.  I reviewed this…

The Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing has about 1000 university-age university music students and another 1000 high school-age students.  They call them middle school students.  There are two large buildings that house the students, rehearsal rooms, concert halls (2), dining facilities and practice rooms.  One of the buildings is 15 floors and the top five floors are all practice rooms; 75…

I have been invited to play some recitals and give some master classes at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China.  This is part of the 2nd International Wind & Percussion Music Festival.  This is a huge thrill and honor for me so I thought I would keep a web log of my adventure here on AllThingsTrumpet. I arrived yesterday evening around 5pm China-time after about 16 hours of…

I'm back from another fantastic ITG Conference.  This time it was Minneapolis, May 23-28.  I would like to thank everyone that stopped by the Composers' Collective booth and said Hi or bought something.  It seemed we hardly ever had any down time.  I also would like to thank my colleagues at the booth, David Canfield, Jim Gauthier, Jim Stephenson and our booth mom, Lauren Bernofsky. I went up…

I would think that most of us have had musical experiences that have dramatically affected, if not impacted our lives; perhaps a top 5 list of favorite musical memories.  Funny thing for me is that I didn’t even play in two of my top five musical moments.  One, was my first concert hearing Herseth live, (Harris 3rd sym.) which made me decide to check out the whole classical world after being a…