Older Entries
Sunday, Oct. 21 2012:
Enigma Ensemble Concert
Tonight I’m playing Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat with a newly created chamber group, Enigma Ensemble. For details on where and when, please visit our (also newly created) website: www.enigmaensemble.com
It’s a really good group of top notch San Francisco Area freelancers, and we’re doing the piece with full narration by special guest Michael Axtell. I hope to record it, and will post some clips when they are available.
I also just started a run of Wagner’s Lohengrin with the San Francisco Opera. I’m playing one of the 4 onstage trumpet parts. This means I’ll be in costume and playing a 3.5 foot long herald trumpet. The opera is about 3.5 hours long, and we are playing fanfares sprinkled throughout the piece. Usually we only have to play for a minute or so, but we end up having about 15 different calls. It’s a lot of fun. They all need to be memorized, and each call is similar, but slightly different, so part of the fun has been trying to keep them all straight in our heads before we walk out onto stage. Here’s a pic of me in my costume.
Saturday, Dec. 1 2012
Tonight I am excited to play a concert with not only the San Francisco Symphony, but also with world renowned trumpet star, Chris Botti. He sounds fantastic, and so does his all-star band. For tickets, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s website, but they’re selling out fast. To the right is a pic I snapped during rehearsal earlier today.
Sunday, January 13, 2013:
Private Lesson Studio Recital
Tonight was my trumpet studio recital. Every student who takes private lessons with me played a solo, accompanied by our brilliant and sensitive pianist, Elizabeth Poole. This year’s recital was at the Phoenix Theater, downtown near Union Square. I was so proud of how everyone performed. All together counting family/friends, we probably had 50 in attendance. Great Job everyone!
March 29th, 2013:
Central City Opera Audition
As anyone who knows me well knows, I’ve been taking a lot of auditions this past year. Back in mid March, I took the Baltimore Symphony 2nd trumpet audition, and made it to the semi-finals. Yesterday, I took an audition for 2nd trumpet of the Central City Opera Orchestra. They are located about an hour west of Denver (at 8500 feet) and do 3 operas every summer. The audition went really well for me. I kept advancing through 3 different rounds, the last of which was playing opera excerpts with the Principal Trumpet in front of the committee. In the end, they gave the job to someone else, but I was named as runner up. Being a national audition, I was pretty happy with both how I played, and how I prepared. I didn’t win the job, but I’m getting closer. On to the next one!
May 6, 2013:
Carmina Burana!
This coming weekend I’m going to be playing principal trumpet with the Modesto Symphony on their blowout production of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. It’s a huge piece- 70 piece orchestra, 100 piece choir, children’s choir, soloists... all in all about 200 people on stage. Plus, the trumpet part is quite demanding- lots of fireworks. It’s a famous piece that gets used in a lot of movies and commercials, and is something you’ve probably heard. Check out the video... And come out and see us!
For tickets, go to:
June 12, 2011
I discovered this weekend that my neighbors are professional indie film makers. They randomly asked me (because they had heard me practicing through the walls) to help out on a project they were doing. They had entered the San Francisco 48 hour film festival, and had to create, shoot and edit a short film all within 48 hours. I can’t believe how well it turned out. They had me come over to their apartment and record about 5 minutes of “wild west sounding trumpet”. I improvised for about 5 minutes, and they did a beautiful job incorporating it into the film. One of the guys who worked on it is a Pixar engineer... Watch it full screen in HD!
Enjoy!
June 16 2013:
Marin Symphony Trumpet Audition
I’m very excited to announce earlier this week, I won an audition for Principal Trumpet of the Marin Symphony! For those who don’t know, Marin is a large county north of San Francisco. (across the Golden Gate Bridge) I worked really hard to get prepared for the audition, and this time, all the hard work finally paid off. I’m also excited about the upcoming season we’ll be presenting- some huge trumpet pieces, including an all John Williams concert, Beethoven Symphony 7, Carmina Burana, Shostakovich Symphony 5, and the incredibly challenging Copland Symphony 3. Can’t wait to get started! Check out the website (I’m not listed yet)
Aug 4th, 2013:
San Francisco Symphony Pops
Last night I played a concert with the San Francisco Symphony. It was a pops show with a serious amount of trumpet playing. It was called “Music from the Movies” and hosted by none other than Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker from Star Wars) We played some of the best known movie music, including: Jurassic Park, Superman, Batman, E.T., Star Wars, Beetlejuice, Ben-Hur, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Titanic, Psycho, and others. It was a run out concert at the beautiful brand new Green Music Center in Marin. (pictured right)
Music from the Movies