Lottie Young, ITG youth correspondent
The opening session of the Youth Focus Day was introduced by John Miller who began by asking ‘everyone younger than I am’ to go down to the front and about 40 members of the audience did so, leaving about 15 people to watch. The traditional gender-split which is associated with brass playing was not nearly so strong in this session (35% girls) – hopefully by the time these young people enter the profession there will be more space for women in trumpet playing. It was about 20 minutes before anyone did any playing – Miller spent a lot of time emphasising the importance of good posture, breathing, and co-ordination. Every part of the body was used in these exercises – there was a lot of foot-circling, which in turn led to football references much enjoyed by the younger participants. Another fun part of the session was focusing on co-ordination – this involved foot-tapping and finger-clicking with a loud ‘HOY!’ in the middle.
This was followed by an Arnold Jacobs exercise – breathing in for 5 beats whilst bringing arms up, followed by holding your breath for 5 whilst holding arms up, and finally breathing out for five with the arms in the original position. Miller cast a humorous slant on this by referring to it as ‘Manchester Sun-Worshipping’ – a nod to the consistently rainy weather in Manchester.
The next move was to add mouthpieces – the importance of a good stance and a loose grip were discussed and this in turn led to glissing up and down as indicated by Miller between octave Gs. We then varied articulation and dynamics whilst playing a specified semiquaver rhythm.
After this all of the kids went to fetch their instruments and returned to the stage where a huge circle of music stands had been set up which had a very impressive effect from the audience. We started with a C chromatic scale as a warm-up and then moved on to copying phrases, the last one of which turned out to be the first phrase of the first piece which we played, Marathon Runner.
Marathon Runner was a short fanfare in four parts. Thematic activity in this piece was more or less randomly allocated throughout the group, so that no-one felt that they were playing a particular part as a result of their own playing ability. This piece started off a little rushed, but soon settled down to a more sensible pace and adopted a more cantabile style.
The second and final piece was a lively arrangement of Camptown Races. Miller spent quite a while at the beginning looking for the right feel. He asked the kids for suggestions as to what the right feel would be for this piece. Miller was very easy-going about any small mistakes – when a rhythm was misread he made a joke out of it, reminding students to ‘Mind The Gap’ (London Underground Reference).
As a whole I feel this session was a great success – everyone involved had a fun time and learned a lot about the ‘basics’ of trumpet playing – Miller left us with a valuable piece of advice: “The big thing about playing is to enjoy it.”
