This session will describe the Alexander Technique and show how it can be applied to trumpet playing and musical expression with demonstrations on volunteers from the audience. Discussion topics will include breathing and performance anxiety. The Alexander Technique is a method tat improves breathing, reduces tension, reduces performance anxiety and improves efficiency.

Karl Sievers, reporter

John Henes delivered an absolutely terrific lecture on the subject of the Alexander Method to a packed auditorium. John is a veteran of the Chicago Lyric Opera trumpet section, and now teaches the Alexander Method at the Northwestern University School of Music. He is a very gifted communicator, and is clearly very experienced in delivering his material today’s environment. He was caring, gentle, considerate, articulate, and very funny. The session was characterized by lots of laughter and lots of great information.

John identified the typical tension tendencies or areas in most trumpet players – neck, back, and in the breathing apparatus (inner and outer intercostals, etc.). We engage those areas in anticipation of playing, as a product of nervousness, in reaching for the trumpet instead of bringing the trumpet to us, as a product of poor posture, or in any combination of the above. He demonstrated how to sit in a chair and rise from a chair.

B.J. Cord (Indiana University graduate) was the first volunteer. B.J. is a fine trumpet player, yet John quickly identified some unnecessary tensions in his neck and in his breathing. With some hands-on manipulation, John was able to get B.J. to lengthen his posture and breathe with more freedom. As you may guess, the difference in the “before and after” tone was significant. Similar tension was evident in Gábor Komlóssy, who also sounded much better after some adjustments were made in his posture and in his breathing.

The differences in the volunteers’ breathing essentially amounted to them learning to “breathe and blow” as one word as opposed to taking the air in and blowing it out again as two separate actions. Predictably, the difference in tone, fluency, and perceived ease of playing was obvious.

Henes’ lecture concluded with a word about performance anxiety. He pointed out that most of us share common symptoms when we are anxious about a performance, and that the Alexander Method takes us in the opposite direction from anxiety, into relaxation and freedom. He urged all of us to make that approach part of what we practice, so it is there for us in times of stress, as opposed to allowing the beginnings of those tensions to be present in our practice, where they will emerge more strongly when under stress.

The lecture was enthusiastically received by a very appreciative audience.