| UWP Brass Blast '06 | February 13, 2007 | |||||||||||
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The small southwestern Wisconsin farm town of Platteville was treated last Fall to an incredibly diverse presentation of the scope of the trumpet. Dr. David Cooper and the University of Wisconsin-Platteville hosted the UWP Brass Blast '06 trumpet festival on November 4, 2006. The day’s events included a natural trumpet presentation by Tom Pfotenhauer, a chamber music masterclass with Charles Lazarus, a jazz presentation by Trent Austin, a masterclass by David Cooper and panel discussion with all of the clinicians. The final presentation was an eclectic evening concert featuring all of the artists with music ranging from the seventeenth through twenty-first century. The atmosphere of the event was that of learning, and each guest artist could not stress enough their love and pursuit of knowledge and practicing. These feelings showed throughout the day as many students received lessons and shared great discussions with the extremely friendly and modest artists. The students and all attending experienced a great day of trumpet talent and teaching. Dr. Thomas Pfotenhauer of the University of Wyoming started the day with a presentation on the natural trumpet. Along with teaching, Tom is currently performing with the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, in addition to his status as an active clinician throughout the central United States. Tom's presentation showed his great expertise on the natural trumpet. He explained the many benefits and challenges that came with pursuing excellence on the instrument, and how it transfers to, and can actually enhance, the rest of one’s performance. The second half of his clinic was spent working with two UWP college students with the sort of considered and careful criticism that only a master of the instrument could give. Charles Lazarus did an excellent job working with the well-prepared UWP Brass Quintet. Lazarus' own experiences of working with brass quintets included periods with the Meridian Arts Ensemble, Dallas Brass, and the Canadian Brass, as well as performances with the New York Big Brass, the New York Trumpet Ensemble, London Brass, and the Montreal Symphony. Lazarus first worked on breathing and attacks with the quintet. After that, he spent most of the time getting the musicians off the written page. He asked the students to make up a story to go along with the music. When the quintet played again they were at a new level. Lazarus then played with the quintet to model a specific phrase. His sound was so huge, warm and seemed truly effortless. This model sound was a great thing for the students in the quintet and audience to hear. Charles was a great clinician, always having fun presenting musical ideas to the quintet. The masterclass ended with a short question and answer session where Charles shared stories of his musical journey through the Julliard School of Music all the way to his current position in the Minnesota Orchestra. Trent Austin, a wonderful jazz artist currently on staff at the University of Southern Maine, has performed with Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, Clark Terry, Maria Schneider, Arturo Sandoval, and Dick Oatts, in addition to holding the featured soloist position with the Artie Shaw Orchestra for eleven years. Trent presented a masterclass on beginning improvisation. He presented the material with a funny and enthusiastic attitude. Even though the jazz presentation given by Austin was tailored for the beginning improviser, the practice techniques covered were wonderful ideas for jazz musicians of any level. As opposed to students starting with all the scales and chords involved with improvisation, Austin has his students either improvising freely around the melody of a tune or simply just playing free. He then teaches the minor pentatonic scale exclusively to start getting his students really comfortable with a specific sound. After several weeks of this, he would then cover specific chord (1-3-5-7) tones. If a student has problem memorizing the chord tones, he asks them to make flash cards. Finally, he would teach the scales to the student. He also stressed the importance of solid rhythm while practicing any aspect of jazz improvisation. Austin demonstrated his rhythmic cell exercise for scales and chord tones which seems like a wonderful tool in improving any musician’s confidence in time. For Austin, another important aspect of improvising is listening and transcribing. He asked members of the audience to name famous trumpeters and he would do an impression of their playing. Clark Terry, Louis Armstrong, Maynard Ferguson and Fats Navarro were among the legends whose style he was asked to recreate and it was amazing how he could change the timbre of his sound and the harmonic vocabulary so quickly to truly sound like those musicians. UW-Platteville’s David Cooper held a masterclass with three high school students. Cooper’s credentials include being principal trumpet with the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, the New Breed Jazz Quintet, the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and the Aspen Jazz Ensemble. The students performed Arban’s Fantasie Brilliante, a jazz etude, and the Artunian Concerto. Cooper stressed “finding the line” in the music no matter what the style, and that playing in a relaxed manner will allow more expressive freedom and versatility.
Austin and Cooper are both Eclipse Trumpet Artists and at one point during the day they shared their thoughts with some students on those instruments and let them play about five different Eclipse trumpets that Trent brought with him. The day finished on a high point, with a great question and answer session that saw Dr. Cooper as a moderator to the three artists all sharing their wealth of experiences. Throughout the day, the teaching attitude of the conference led to many excellent questions from the audience of high school and college students. The panel responded accordingly with many great answers and stories, giving inspiration to those hoping to share in their life-long obsession with trumpet music. The evening concert was the perfect end to an outstanding festival. All clinicians, including a fifth trumpeter Craig Hara, who also played guitar and percussion during the night’s program, performed in the opening fanfare, the Fanfare and Fugue by Jan Bach. After the fanfare, Tom Pfotenhauer took the audience back several hundred years with his performance of the Purcell and Torelli sonatas on the natural trumpet. Tom's beautiful tone made the instrument appear to almost play itself. This was especially a treat due to the newly-gained knowledge of the difficulties involved with playing the natural trumpet. Two UWP faculty members accompanied Pfotenhauer, Eugene Alcalay on harpsichord and Benjamin Shapira on cello. Next was the host, and trumpet professor at University of Wisconsin-Platteville, David Cooper, who performed three 20th century pieces: Intrada for Trumpet by Otto Ketting, Solo by David Sampson, and Legend by Georges Enesco. The first two pieces were for unaccompanied trumpet, and the third featured piano accompaniment by Alcalay, giving the audience a taste of beautiful solo playing in new harmonic contexts. Cooper continued his portion of the program with five selected duets from the 44 duets by Bela Bartok originally for two violins (Dr. Cooper has transcribed, arranged and published these duets for two trumpets, and premiered them at the 2004 ITG conference.) Cooper was joined by Pfotenhauer, this time on the modern trumpet, and the two performed the duets flawlessly. The duets work very well for two trumpets and these selections were definitely a high point in the evening’s program. The second half of the concert was based around original music. Both Charles Lazarus and Trent Austin have recorded their own CDs of original pieces, and chose to show their passion for composition through their sets. Both performers were joined on stage by some of the Midwest’s finest jazz performers: Tim Whalen on piano, Nick Moran on bass, Craig Hara on percussion and guitar, and Dane Richeson on percussion. Charles Lazarus dazzled the audience with some of his original compositions. His technique was remarkable, especially his double-tonguing wide intervals without missing a note. His compositions seem to be influenced by jazz and folk music. The four pieces were performed with eclectic grooves from Afro-Cuban to Funk to Klezmer with Lazarus' amazing technical ability on top. Trent Austin showed off his jazz prowess with two originals, Three Wheeler and 8-pack. His technique and sound seemed to have no limits. He could play extremely fast without missing anything, while nevertheless playing very expressively. His solo on the ballad You Don’t Know What Love Is was filled with so much passion. You could tell that he was really getting into the music, and the audience’s response to that solo was thunderous. It is not often that you get to hear a musician who has incredible technique, great sense of style, and truly enjoys himself on stage. The evening’s program came to an end with all the clinicians performing in an all-trumpet little big band. They played Cooper’s four-trumpet arrangements In Case You Missed It by Bobby Watson and Wayne Shorter’s arrangement of Ellington’s Caravan. The first tune Cooper and Austin took the solos. Both solos were exceptional in their ability to convey the players’ unique styles and messages. Everyone played a solo on the last tune, and it was again a perfect way to end an outstanding trumpet festival. Hopefully there will be many more Brass Blasts to follow.
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