Dr. David Spencer, Professor of Trumpet from the University of Memphis, gave a master class for the University of Missouri students last month.
Spencer, who has been teaching in Memphis for nearly twenty years, is currently on a sabbatical and is working as a Director of the Music Academy Escola Americana in Campinas, Brazil. In the master class, he covered various topics from music and music education to quantum physics: one of the trumpet students was a physics major, and Spencer bridged the gap between those subjects.
Several students played for the guest artist. While working with graduate conducting student Tom Smyth on the first movement of Eric Ewazen’s Sonata, Spencer talked about his collaboration with the composer, with whom he was scheduled to perform that particular work two days later at the Rutgers University. Later senior Anne Linders played the second movement from the same sonata. Spencer used different approaches with each student, working on both technical and musical aspects of the piece as well as incorporating mouthpiece buzzing, singing, and as demonstrating his points on the trumpet.
At the end of the class, David Spencer asked MU junior Sean Sweany and Charles Miller, student of Dr. Greg Jones at the Truman State University, to sight-read a simple duet. Spencer had them switch parts and then played one of the parts himself, demonstrating how to be both a good team player and a bad one.
Later that day, Spencer gave a recital together with MU trumpet professor Dr. Iskander Akhmadullin and pianist Dr. Natalia Bolshakova. The two played Manfredini’s Concerto for two trumpets and orchestra and an American premiere of Caccia for Two Trumpets by James Wintle.
Spencer played the English horn part of Aaron Copland’s Quiet City on flugelhorn and performed Ewazen’s Sonata. Akhmadullin played James Wintle’s Vaudeville and later Alexander Arutiunian’s Aria as a tribute to the composer, who passed away two weeks earlier. The last piece of the recital was Timofei Dokshizer’s arrangement of Saint-Saëns’ Bolero.
Source: Iskander Akhmadullin
Photo: David Spencer, Sean Sweany, Charles Miller