Musicians (especially freelance musicians) spend a lot of time waiting for the phone to ring. Which raises the question: who are we expecting to call? Random calls are vanishingly rare; gigs nearly always come through pre-existing relationships. So rather than simply staring at the quiet phone, it makes sense to invest in the kinds of relationships […]

Here’s an interesting game: pick your nine favorite symphonies without repeating a composer, and with each symphony sequentially numbered in a conventional sense. Prokofiev 1: Elegantly constructed. As close to Bach as I can get in this list, since he didn’t write conventionally numbered symphonies Brahms 2: Efficient motivic development makes this (and Brahms’s other […]

Each role in an orchestra comes with its own set of non-musical challenges. For instance, percussionists carry a lot of equipment and need early access to venues to set up, not to mention special parking privileges for loading and unloading. Trombonists are no exception, but our challenges are sometimes less well understood. I can’t even […]

In an effort to start 2015 off right, I’ve ported this site to new software and tweaked the template for mobile users. Not much has changed in terms of the site itself, but most pages will have moved to a new URL. Update your links if you have any! I think this is a good opportunity […]

Brass quartet version of the classic