When I was first approached about being a guest blogger here at the FSO blog, several topic ideas were brought up, and I was given free reign to mull them over and decide what I wanted to write about. So, I mulled for a while, thinking of the various ideas and what I might write, but each time I gravitated to the topic of how I prepare for an upcoming FSO concert. Especially with our Planets concert coming up in less than a week, this really seemed appropriate!

The trouble with this topic is that when I sat down to start writing, the answer to the question "How do you prepare for an upcoming concert" turned out to be "I don't do much." This may come as a surprise to some of our listeners, but it really is true. Sort of. As with many things, the real answer is a bit more complicated: "I don't do much that is different than what I do every day anyway."

Over the years I have found that, for me, the single most important thing I can do to prepare for any particular performance is to maintain my general skills (what we call "technique" in the music world) on the trumpet at the highest level I can. Additionally, I need to maintain my "chop strength" and endurance. On trumpet this is of paramount importance, as one of the biggest difficulties we have is marshaling the physical strength required to get all the way through a piece and still have a good sound on loud, soft, high and low passages. Composers almost always leave the highest, loudest, most strenuous work for the trumpets until the end of the concert!
To maintain and build my strength and endurance, every morning I play through a special "warm-up" routine. This routine takes me about half an hour, and mostly involves playing short passages, around 30 seconds in length, over and over again at different pitch levels. It is not exciting to play. It is not pretty to listen to. But, it gets results! It is a very rare day when I skip doing this.. I would guess no more than 10 days in a year, tops.

I typically rest for at least 45 minutes after my warm-up. Then my next practice session is all about technique. I start with scales. These are the fundamental building blocks of technique on pretty much every instrument, and I almost never miss a day of practicing them. I cycle through different types of scales each day, so if today is major scale day, then tomorrow will probably be harmonic minor scale day, and so on. After scales, I move on to "technical exercises." These are very short passages that isolate specific technical challenges of trumpet playing. Technical exercises can be very tedious to work on, so I cycle through these as well.. some days I work on articulation (how I begin and end notes), some days finger dexterity, other days lip flexibility (which is necessary for playing passages that move from high to low or low to high - a challenge to do well on the trumpet), etc.

After the technical exercises, I move on to "etudes." Etudes are pieces that are written specifically to exercise all the various technical skills in the context of real music. They are typically a page or two in length, and last around 3-8 minutes. Some are really hard, some are really beautiful, some are both. I have a large collection of etude books and try to cycle through at least one or two etudes each week.

So, you may be asking yourself by now, "does he ever practice any music?" YES!! Finally, after all my warm-ups and technical exercises and etudes, I get to work on real music! As a full-time freelance trumpeter, I have the music for 4-6 upcoming concerts in my bag at any given time, plus long-term musical projects like recitals or other solo performances. How much time any particular piece gets in the practice room varies very widely. January's FSO concert, which featured Gustav Mahler's 7th Symphony, got a large amount of practice time over several weeks. February's concert, with baritone soloist Isaac Grier, was fairly light on trumpet parts, so it got only a little time, maybe one or two days. A full solo recital will get an hour or more of my attention every day for several months.

Our upcoming concert consists of two pieces, Samuel Barber's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Gustav Holst's The Planets. Both are wonderful pieces and present some real challenges for the trumpets. Luckily for me I've performed both pieces before, so I already know them fairly well. I will probably spend 4 days or so with them in the practice room before our first rehearsal. I like to do this spaced out over a longer period, but because this is a busy time of year (I've been playing with the Ann Arbor Symphony all this week and had several other gigs before that) I have to do this one back to back over four calendar days.

In addition to practicing the music with trumpet in hand, I also listen to recordings of other orchestras performing pieces that I'm going to be performing. I spend a lot of time in the car, so much of my listening takes place while driving, but I also try to get a few sessions in where I can listen and follow along on either the trumpet part or a full score. My listening regimen for the current concert has been a little unorthodox, because one of my favorite recordings of The Planets is not the original orchestral version that we're playing. I've actually spent quite a bit of time listening to a version of the piece created by electronic musician Isao Tomita. Produced in the mid-seventies, "The Tomita Planets" is a really playful and fun take on the music done entirely electronically. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you ever have the chance. All this writing about practicing is reminding me that I really need to get my trumpets out and do some actual practicing!

Download Tomita's "The Planets" here.

Enjoy the concert!!