"And the winner of the Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Solo Competition is ..." The room waited in complete silence and I had a flashback to the four days prior to this. I was thinking that the Ellsworth Smith Competition is not the easiest competition to win! There were seven contestants: Fábio Brum, Goni Eshed, Kevin Gebo, £ukasz Gothszalk , Kazuaki Kikumoto, Kevin Maloney, and Huw Morgan. My dad is Terry Everson; host of the competition and winner of the first Ellsworth Smith Competition. I had an opportunity to attend every second of the entire competition. I have to admit, being 11 years old, I got bored sometimes, but I made it through the whole thing!

During the four days of competition, my favorite person kept changing, because they were all so good. We heard in the second round a Méndez arrangement and the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, in the third round (which took 4 1/2 hours!) the Telemann Concerto and Okna by Petr Eben, in the fourth round the Henderson Variation Movements and the Hindemith Sonate, in the fifth round the Krzywicki Sonata, and in the final round a new piece by Richard Cornell entitled Concertino for Trumpet and Orchestra. All the contestants did awesomely, but they had different things in the music that made it their own. They had different cadenzas, they all had different sounds (some were big, some were thinner, some were darker, and some were richer or warmer), some were more musical, some memorized their music, some made it sound easy, and some sounded like they knew the pieces better. They were all amazing players though!

I wondered what made this competition so difficult! I discovered that the pieces were EXTREMELY complicated, that all of the contestants were really good, and that the competition went for four days straight with barely any break between each round. Furthermore they were responsible for learning eight complex pieces, with different styles, many of which had been played by very few people.

I attended three masterclasses and a recital performed by the judges - Stephen Burns, Gabriele Cassone, and Jens Lindemann. Stephen Burns talked about five ways to play music better in his masterclass - Sound, Intonation, Rhythm, Style, and Expression. Gabriele Cassone spoke about the air, the lip and the mind in his masterclass, and Jens Lindemann talked about blowing out not up when playing high notes. Jens Lindemann was kind enough to give me a mini-lesson. In my lesson he had me flapping my arms and rolling a bottle under my foot! It was weird, but fun!

I asked the judges questions. Here are some of them.

Q: What is the hardest thing about your job as a judge?
A: Mr. Burns - "The hardest thing about our job is to not pre-judge the players based on what they had already done a previous day - to go in without expectations. You have to stay neutral."

Q: What is the easiest part of your job?
A: Mr. Cassone - "The easiest part of our job is when we give the prize at the end. The beginning is difficult because we want to make sure we do it right. We want everyone to feel good, to have fun, to learn something and to become a better person and player afterwards."

Q: What were you least anticipating about judging?
A: Mr. Cassone - "If there were two trumpeters at the same level - which one to choose?"
A: Mr. Burns - "As a juror you have to be nice and fair and care about the competitors. You find some judges favor some contestants. You have to be fair."

Q: What was the hardest part of the competition when you were a competitor?
A: Mr. Cassone - "The hardest part was the day before and in between times of playing."
A: Mr. Burns - "When you play, you play, but the hardest part was anticipating the competition and the waiting after, because you never know until you win."

Separate comments:

Mr. Burns - "When you are in a competition, you learn from other trumpeters - other styles from different countries. You win by listening to others. You learn that you still need to work on some stuff. "

Mr. Lindemann - "When you attend a solo contest, you need to bring your own pianist, don't get off the plane only two days before the first round, and look at it as an investment, not a waste of time. "