ITG 2005

Neville Young, reporter

I’m going to run out of superlatives: I can feel it now.

We started dramatically. The hall hushed as Jennifer Snow took the stage but then a silence settled while we waited for the soloist to appear. Then, almost imperceptibly, a beautiful, floating line of very high piccolo trumpet from offstage wove its way into the room and resolved into the beginning of Debussy’s The Girl with the Flaxen Hair. Eventually Jens Lindemann joined his pianist on stage and the work continued, a lovely arrangement exploring both extremes of the piccolo’s range and giving the audience ample opportunity to enjoy Lindemann’s superb piccolo tone.

Next we heard the Trumpet Concerto by Alan Gilliland. This new work has grown from a suite to a sonata to a fully-fledged concerto and it was the trumpet and piano version of this latter – which is now published – which was here performed. As Lindemann explained, the concerto straddles the classical and jazz worlds somewhat, being essentially a classical piece but having moments of jazz articulation and phrasing. In its first movement we heard a bold, march-like start leading to some interesting motivic development, a later theme based on a rapid triplet figure, and an extended and challenging cadenza. The slow movement has huge long phrases and is played both Harmon-muted and open, both delivered with fantastic warmth and resonance by Lindemann. The third movement is urgent and declamatory at first, slowing for a dark, slow, low restart then building with increasing rhythmic pressure into a series of runs and an explosive, screamingly high ending. Sadly the ITG Official Writers’ Manual for this Conference has banned many of my favourite clichés including “a useful addition to the repertoire” so I will just say: it’s a good new piece, and you should get it and play it. How’s that?

Lindemann talked about the importance of playing songs, and the role that other forms of music have in changing our playing styles, and went on to perform three Spanish songs which made his point rather well. Sin Tu Amor is an emotional rollercoaster, the young man imagining the terror of losing his love – then getting over it surprisingly quickly when he considers the other benefits that freedom could perhaps bring! Tus Ojillos Negros is a tender love song played with great conviction - eventually. Lindemann had already explained that he dislikes many straight mutes but was using a new product from David Hickman, the Sotto Voce mute, which he does like. Just as he began this moving, tune’s muted beginning the audience were surprised, nay convulsed, to see Hickman kindly return the plug/compliment by moving gracefully round the hall with a silver tray of Lindemann’s CDs for sale. As you can imagine, this brought the house down, to the extent that the performance stopped for a couple of moments till order was restored… In the third song, El Vito, we were given the ever-welcome opportunity to shout Olé! at strategic moments in this spectacular, flashy tune.

Ray Vasquez then joined Lindemann on stage for the duet May I Quote You? by Greg McLean. This brief work takes the listener on a ramble through a number of well-known trumpet quotes, held together with some great jazz duet writing. Everything stopped briefly while a terrifying “battle of the octaves” took place, based on the Strauss Also Sprach quote with the dotted triplet followed by the octave. What followed cannot easily be described without upsetting the more sensitive reader, but suffice it to say that it is probably not quite what Strauss envisaged. As a colleague remarked: “only at a trumpet conference!” Naturally the crowd, your reporter included, loved it.

An adaptation of Percy Grainger’s setting of Danny Boy then followed. This was gorgeously simple, and simply gorgeous: ’nuff said. Next we heard Lindemann’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Three Preludes, originally a piano work whose music responds well to this lively, challenging adaptation. I must particularly mention the second prelude in which the soloist wailed and preached in a wonderful extended passage with plunger. As promised, Lindemann was at pains to keep the trumpet nerd-journalists in the audience au fait with his “mutage” so I was delighted to note that this was a Walmart $2 plunger. Players without easy Walmart access but who want to sound just like that too will have to wait till some enterprising importer can get these exotic items for us.

The final piece announced was Variations on Amazing Grace, subtitled Homage to Luther Henderson. Henderson did many arrangements for the Canadian Brass and this was a modified version of one of his, to which Lindemann has “added a few twists and turns.” Starting with a rather lovely unaccompanied flugelhorn solo, the variations paid brief visits to various musical idioms before landing in a highly gymnastic, Arbanlike triple-tonguing-fest before a big jazz ending.

Lindemann and his brilliant accompanist were welcomed back to the stage for their encore, another Gershwin tune, Someone to Watch over Me, and then this fabulous trumpet recital was all too soon at an end.