“Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…”

Dennis (Michael Palin) might not have agreed with King Arthur (Graham Chapman) about the structure of society, but many chamber groups who are just getting started would be lucky to have the clear structure of a monarchy confirmed by Excalibur for managing their operations and direction. Our blog this month talks about how Gaudete has managed to survive as equal partners.

The initial stages of forming a chamber group with equal partners are turbulent, and most groups unfortunately don’t survive long enough to need to establish a written document of policies and practices. For groups that work very sporadically, groups with an interchangeable membership, or groups with a single owner or director, having a set of operational guidelines might be optional. For groups who want to be equal partners, who rehearse regularly, and require long term commitments of time and energy from members, a set of clear guidelines are essential. 

Gaudete has been fortunate to have been guided by a formal operations document for over a decade. This document was born out of the many times in those first years we had to say “I’ve made a huge mistake.” It happened so often we started calling it the “Gaudete Way.” We wrote our operational document to address those issues and issues we could extrapolate from those mistakes.

Once a group has decided that it would like to build a chamber group of equal partners and the members have established a track record of functioning together with regular rehearsal and increasingly excellent performances, the group should sit down together when things are going well and everyone is happy to create an such an operations document. 

Our document addresses our mission statement, performance requirements, non-musical requirements, leave of absence guidelines (including medical, personal and professional), and guidelines for member changes, both voluntary and involuntary. In every case, the guidelines were written to protect the quintet. For example, in our documents, a professional leave of absence has a limited non-renewable time limit since a brass quintet with only 4 full time members is significantly weakened. Also, the quintet retains all intellectual property rights during a member change - ensuring the ability of the remaining members to continue to function after a departure. 

While a document cannot cover every eventuality, the key is that there are guidelines in place to help the group - guidelines that everyone agreed to follow before a problem might come up. For an unforeseen situation, an operations document can provide direction for the group when faced with making a difficult decision.

The Intonation Red Pill

Now that the 5 part Bach chorale book I created is being distributed and shared, I have been asked about specific recommendations for fixing intonation and balance in a brass quintet. In this blog, I’ll share some more detailed thoughts on how intonation in a group can actually get better and what ideas about intonation might stand in the way. It is a complex topic, so let me show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. 

Working on intonation is one of the most difficult things to accomplish. The first step is getting the entire group on board with the project of achieving perfect intonation (which I define for these purposes as having every chord as beat-less as possible). This impossible goal of perfect intonation is actually really important because it reduces the stigma of calling out an individual player. If you are all on the quest together for this impossible goal you can all get really close to it as a group without making one or two players feel weaker since no one, not even the player with the strongest intonation, is perfect. Everyone can get better together.

Once you are all committed to this endeavor, some practical steps must be taken. First, make sure you all agree that you are trying to play at A= the same pitch level, 440 or whatever you all choose. I have found it also helpful in the beginning stages to have everyone individually check where their instrument is generally playing each day by playing into a tuner before rehearsal starts so you make sure that no one is overall sharp or flat. A group can still actually make all of the chords work if someone is way sharp, but it is a lot more difficult and wearing on the chops. Things like temperature, general stress level, or fatigue (both playing fatigue and general fatigue) make a big difference to the pitch level an individual is playing his or her instrument day to day, so checking in is useful - better that everyone starts on equal footing.

After that, the tuners go away. They might come back out again if something is really off, but ideally you want to do all of the rest of the work with your ears. If your quintet has downloaded my Bach chorale book, choose a chorale that looks good. Some are much easier than others. They all represent different voicing difficulties found in the standard rep that require particular care with balance. (For example, the one on page 9 is the only 5 voice one in this book for which Bach wrote all 5 voices. The 2 trumpets must be very aware not to overbalance when they find themselves on unison notes.) Page 6 or 7 make good starting places. Play your chosen chorale, noting any particularly troubling spots, especially any chords at the end of phrases. You can play small sections with pairs of instruments to find where the discrepancies are. Hopefully, this will begin the process of improving a group’s intonation. Sometimes, more drastic measures may be required. When Gaudete first started playing chorales, we would often spend quite a bit of rehearsal perfecting one of them before moving on to other music. The goal is perfection, and this music is easy enough that you can achieve it. Ideally, you don’t move on until the group as a whole can play through with perfect intonation and perfect attacks. 

Ensemble balance can be improved with these chorales by focusing on the moving 8th notes as they pass through the ensemble. The tune in the first trumpet is easy to hear and need not be very loud. If the first trumpet understands this, the other players tend to play softer too, leaving the ensemble room to shape the phrases together. Also, having an ensemble that understands that a quintet doesn’t really have "raw power" as one of its expressive tools (the way a large brass ensemble does) will help, too. It is only the contrast between soft and loud that matters. As soon as anyone plays with a sound that is out of control, it becomes hard to match attacks across the quintet, and then the ensemble doesn’t sound tight. Having players out of balance can easily be perceived as an intonation problem. 

There are a few misunderstandings about the most efficient way to tune that are pervasive in the brass world. I am going to suggest a few things to try that might sound a bit radical. The biggest problem I encounter when working with younger groups is that we have all been taught to tune by listening down to the lowest instrument. The problem with this is that tuba presents such a large target that hitting “in tune” with the tuba can be achieved by two instruments at the same time that still won’t be in tune with each other. It is actually much easier if the quintet generally starts listening “up” and tuning to the trumpet. (The trumpet should still listen down, starting with listening to the second trumpet.) The trumpet is a very easy sound to lock into. With the flexibility of the valve slides, trumpet players should be able to be pretty accurate if they take care to avoid problems (for example, letting the G go way sharp). The reality is that when a high instrument and a low instrument are out of tune, most people will perceive that the lower instrument is the one out of tune. It is in our interest then to match the trumpet player in the performance moment and then slowly take the passage apart if the group thinks that the trumpet player played out of tune. 

The issue of where to place notes to eliminate beats will also come up while working through the chorale book or any tonal music. In many instances, one player has a note that holds or repeats, and other players move around it. My solution is to consider playing in a “key” for each chorale. For example, in an Eb major chorale a C as the 6th  note in Eb Major would be played low so that when one builds a C minor chord, the C would be low to make the minor 3rd interval wide, therefore having fewer beats. A player could then hold an Eb in the same place across a few bars while the chords change around it if the tonality remains the same. You could tune a keyboard this way to have most of the chords perfect in one key. For the few instances this doesn’t work when the harmony or progressions are more complex, we who play flexible instruments can make the small adjustments easily. It is like creating a temperament. I believe that brass players generally play in a temperament that is influenced by how our instruments are built and the keys of most of our music. It takes a really good brass ensemble to transcend the problem of sounding good playing in Bb and bad playing in B. This is exactly like the results one would find on a keyboard in a non-equal temperament. If we admit this is what is happening, we can start adjusting for each key by making intelligent guesses about where to place notes for each key in tonal music. It should also go without saying that things like high melodic leading tones have no place in this system. 

Certainly the best rule for intonation is to listen and be ready to compromise. Be ready to raise the pitch to help the ensemble sound great under that first trumpet high note that is being played way sharp at the end of a long concert. Although you should always be ready to adjust, you must play as if you expect the chord to be in tune. If everyone is constantly adjusting, it will be almost as difficult to play in tune as if no one were adjusting. Your group can gain confidence from repeated success so individual players can play with confidence. If you can hear your place in an in tune chord before you play it, you will have a significantly higher rate of success. Spending time working on intonation as a group will help you cultivate a taste for good intonation. The more you experience it, the more you will want to have it, and the easier it will be to find. More brass players playing in tune and listening for balance will make a better musical world.

“An elegant weapon... for a more civilized age.”

One of the things that I love about playing concerts with the Gaudete Brass is the opportunity to talk to the audience members after the music is over. Often, as part of sharing their concert experience, some audience members will ask questions about our instruments and mutes. The interest in instruments is a natural part of chamber music. I recently attended an exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix that focused on the Cremona violin makers, sharing what players and audiences have enjoyed about those string instruments for hundreds of years. If some of our audience begins to be curious about brass instruments in the same way, then I think it is wonderful and an essential step for brass chamber music. 

There are, to be sure, some unusual instruments in the group; 1960’s French flügelhorns made by Couesnon, Scott’s Swiss made compact F tuba, Bill’s Eb trumpet with the diagonal lead pipe, and my trombone - a small bore tenor trombone with no rotor valve. 

When we play for audiences who are used to seeing trombones in an orchestral or wind band context, my instrument stands out as strange because of its size and lack of rotor. Most trombonists today who perform primarily in large ensembles choose equipment that is significantly larger than the trombones that would have been found in recording studios, leading dance bands, and playing live music during the early and mid 20th century. The larger trombones of today excel at being able to provide a foundation for a large ensemble and are designed to sound rich while being played at very loud volumes. 

Since most young brass players get their largest amount of early experience performing in large ensembles (school bands), most players are encouraged/required to learn and play on large bore horns with the addition of a rotor valve that adds 4 notes below the bass clef staff to the range (as well as a bit of extra weight). I played a large bore trombone for about 21 years - all through high school, my collegiate studies, and my early career. At the same time, I was very fortunate that my high school had an old King 3b, a small bore trombone from the 1950’s that I was able to start learning how to play. Having access to that horn encouraged me listen to players who played smaller instruments and helped me discover a lot different styles of music. 

Today I play a trombone modeled after the great mid century smaller trombones. It is made by Steve Shires, who builds trombones outside of Boston, and designed in collaboration with the great trombonist Michael Davis (tech specs .495 bore slide lightweight 7.5” yellow brass bell). 

Four years ago, Gaudete was touring in the Southwest and Southern California when we had a half day free and stopped at Steve Ferguson’s excellent music shop “Hornguys” in L.A. I picked this horn up, played a few notes and never wanted to put it down. It was like a visit to Ollivander’s. We tried it in the quintet, and although it was different than the larger horn I had been playing, the response of the group was very positive. I decided to try it, and I have played it on every Gaudete concert since.

I am one of the few trombonists today playing on such small equipment and that seems strange to many trombonists. This instrument does however offer some advantages for quintet playing.

1. Articulation - In a brass quintet, the articulation of the trumpet is the gold standard for the beginning of the sound. The trumpets usually sit in front and because of their range they will naturally sound clearer and more immediate. Having a trombone with a quick response helps match that clarity. That’s not to say that you can’t get it in a larger trombone, but you usually must work harder to do it. 

2. Characteristic trombone color - In Gaudete we strive to present our group as true chamber music. To this end, there are times when we are looking for a large brass ensemble sound - but not very often. Even then, it is only one of the many colors we hope to use on the concert. One of the things the early brass quintets playing in the mid 20th century (also often using smaller trombones) celebrated was that the brass quintet could maintain distinct individual instrument voices that would allow them to excel at conveying complex polyphonic music as well as have a unified sound that could at times still at times present a unified color. I find that the smaller trombone allows me to maintain a distinct trombone color and not blend too much into the horn sound. 

3. Endurance and Ease - Playing a smaller and lighter instrument helps with endurance when we are playing full concerts. We commission several pieces of new music every year, and some of the composers have written challenging and fun trombone parts that have a lot to play. The last thing I want to do on a concert is sound tired, and having an instrument that is easier to play is a very nice thing. 

4. Mutes - Mutes, which we use a lot in quintet seem to work slightly better in general on the smaller horn in both response across the range and color change. More of them stay in the bell more successfully, although the dreaded mid concert mute drop can still happen. 

5. Matches the trombone sounds I love - This is perhaps the most important reason. When I think of the trombone sounds that I love I think of players like Dick Nash, Tommy Dorsey, and Lawrence Brown. As a student I always struggled to get theses sounds out of the larger equipment. It can be done, but to do it for long periods on the bigger equipment is to to invite playing less efficiently and with more tension. Matching the trombone to the sound I have in my head allows me to practice easy playing with less tension. I also believe that this smaller sound is more compelling. When trombones were a popular instrument, it was this sound that captured the imagination. As Gaudete looks to build the audience beyond the core fans of brass music, we will take every musical advantage we can get.  

The last aspect of the horn to address is the lack of the rotor valve mentioned above for those 4 notes below the staff. I do sometimes miss it, but with a tuba in the group those notes almost never come up in the tenor trombone part. Since we commission music regularly, I ask composers not to write them. For the very few times they come up if it is once or twice in a piece I will play them as a kind of pedal tone. If they are all over the piece I will pull out my old King Bass Trombone like I did when we played Zhou Long’s Five Maskers, where the trombone part is below the staff for much of the piece. 

The trombone is a an elegantly simple design that has been around mostly unchanged for 550 years. In the age of the revival of LP records, 8 bit graphics and single speed bikes, the idea of simplicity still attracts people. Sometimes the older style tools can be remarkably effective. There are 19th c. daguerrotype panoramic images that are so perfect that it would require a modern digital camera of 140,000 megapixels to be able to match the detail. (http://www.wired.com/2010/07/ff_daguerrotype_panorama/) Sometimes the older tools are at least worth considering. Or perhaps a as recent moderately popular movie reminds us, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed… “

“Shhh” - Dr. Evil

Vorpal Sordino

One of the most confusing aspects of writing for brass is the use of mutes. They are an important part of the brass player’s color palette. When brass players have had the largest impact on the 20th century musical culture, they were using mutes. The trombone has captured the imagination of many people through Quentin Jackson’s passionate plunger playing or Tommy Dorsey’s shimmering solo-tone. Miles Davis found his voice with the help of a Harmon mute with no stem. Mutes were a staple of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras and were used extensively in all of the dance bands, musical theater pits, radio, television and film orchestras for most of the 20th century. 

As I write this at the beginning of the 21st century, it seems that using mutes for brass is becoming a lost art. I believe brass players are primarily to blame for this, and I hope that this article will help composers and players understand the challenges and benefits of exploring the muted colors again. 

In the many world premieres that Gaudete has played and the many standard brass quintet works that I have studied, mutes, beyond the straight mute, are quite rare. This is puzzling because mutes allow an ensemble made up of only brass players to access many different colors. Additionally puzzling is the fact that the mute in most common use, the straight mute, is the closest mute in the sonic spectrum to the open horn. I can understand the rarity of mutes for brass in an orchestra. If you want a different color you can use an oboe, or flute, or violin, or tuba. With brass alone, however, those colors need to be created other ways. Certainly range and volume and the different combinations of instruments can be effective, but mutes allow us to access sounds that are wildly different and, when used creatively, can be very effective.

There are some barriers to this wonderful world of musical color however. The first is that many composers (and even some brass players who have not yet become mute nerds) simply don’t know about all of the options. Straight, cup, Harmon with stem, Harmon without stem, plunger with pixie style mute, plunger on its own, solo-tone, bucket, mel-o-wah, and whispa mutes are all available muting options for trumpet and tenor trombone players. This list can be a bit overwhelming, but all of these create distinctly different sounds. How can a composer who is not a brass player and mute nerd take advantage of them? One of the most compelling options I have seen is from the pen of Leonard Bernstein. In his Dance Suite he wrote “dirty mute” in the trombone part at one point. This doesn’t specify any particular mute but invites the player to choose a mute that he or she feels matches the affect the composer calls for. In Bernstein’s Suite, one can choose a favorite mute that can create a “dirty” sound. This is commonly a plunger mute which also has the connotation in the popular imagination of being a “dirty” mute (I have actually been asked after a concert if I took it from a used plunger), but it is up to the player to use all of his or her creative skill, imagination, and arsenal of mutes to make the right choice. Composers who aren’t intimately familiar with all of the brass mutes could use descriptive words for the muted passages, and then players could choose from the options available what would work best for the particular performance. It is also essential that composers sit down with brass players who know mutes to learn what the very difficult things to do on a mute are. For example, a stemless Harmon can be very unresponsive on trombone in the low register. A composer should know that they are making the player fight with the mute when such a part is written. 

One difficulty that comes up when writing for mutes is determining the amount of time needed for players to put in a mute. Some brass players get really good at fast mute changes, but I don’t know that any of us like having to do a quick mute change. The mutes can cause damage to our bells when really fast mute changes are required, even if one is good at it. I have developed a test that a composer can try to determine if a mute change can be easily accomplished. Take a beer glass equivalent to the size to the mute you want to use. For trombone I would use a pint glass, for trumpet a taster glass, and for tuba one would need to find the largest boot available. Fill the glass with excellent beer all the way to the rim. Set the glass on the floor and move it to the table without spilling a drop. This is approximately the amount of time needed to insert the mute. To time the removal of the mute just reverse the process. 

One of the other questions composers sometimes ask is regarding writing mute dynamics. While not all mutes have an effect on the volume, most do. Some of them, like the trombone Harmon mute, will have a drastic effect on the volume. Given this volume reduction, the question arises, “should the dynamic written be the desired relative sounding dynamic or the dynamic the player should feel like he or she is playing?” Since all mutes effect the volume differently for different players and that amount will vary drastically even between different brands of the same type of mute, the best practice for composers is to simply write the desired sounding dynamic and have the players do their best to produce it, keeping in mind that in a resonant space, a muted instrument such as a horn or trombone could have trouble keeping up with the volume of an open tuba. 

From the player’s perspective, developing brass players often don’t have the encouragement or the opportunity to explore the unique mute colors. At school, we almost never talked about mutes. The only time it came up was when a work for a large ensemble called for a particular mute. Learning to play that particular mute or was rarely stressed in lessons. As long as you owned the kind of mute specified in the part, you were fine. I believe this experience is fairly common in brass pedagogy. On some level it isn’t complicated, you put the mute in the bell and you blow, but one must get used to the the differences. Players should spend time playing together in chamber music with mutes in to learn how to tune them and have them respond with some consistency. Mutes do make it harder to play, and all of them compromise intonation and articulation to some extent. Learning how to play in a mute can help reduce these problems, even if they will never be gone entirely. 

When mutes were used most effectively in the ‘30s trumpets and trombones were (along with the saxophones) the primary instruments in many of the popular musical styles. There was a huge market for mute sales from big bands. I recently saw a photo of a mute stand from the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. There were two different kinds of cup mutes in addition to straight, solo-tone and hat mutes. The mutes available to these players are in many cases make sounds that are simply not available to players buying mutes today. If I wanted a solo-tone with a sound like the ‘30s players had, I need to wait for a mute from the ‘30s to come up on eBay. There just isn’t a large market for trombone solo-tone mutes made the old way. Trombone bells also were generally smaller at that time. I have found that the smaller horns generally work better with certain kinds of mutes than larger belled modern horns. I have recently acquired a few vintage mutes (a cup and straight) and the sounds are very cool. 

There are some signs that the art of the mute is reviving. Mute expert Roger Ingram has applied  his expertise in restoring vintage mutes to the development of a 3D printed solo-tone mute for trumpet that has the awesome vintage sound. Our trumpet player Bill bought the first one on the market and it sounds great. If only he would make one for trombone. (Please.) 

Since you are reading a Gaudete Brass blog, there are some mute issues unique to the brass quintet that I should mention. The first is that while the trumpets and tenor trombone have many mute options, the horn only has straight mute and stopped horn and the tuba only has a straight mute. (I know cup mutes and bucket mutes for these instruments exist, but almost no players have them and for some reason don’t want to go buy them.) Although the straight mutes are the only option for the conical instruments, that should not limit the use of the other mute varieties for the cylindrical instruments. Horn and tuba are instruments that excel at blending, and their mute colors can work the same way. A quintet cup muted color can be created in a quintet with the trumpets and tenor trombone in cup mutes and horn and tuba in straight mutes. 

There is one more aspect of using mutes that I need to address that I feel very conflicted about. While I have been extolling the virtues of creative use of mutes, I do run up against one aspect of modern life that speaks against mute prodigality - air travel. As I write this, getting baggage on an airplane has become more and more difficult. Checked bags cost money, and for an individual or a small business owner, those fees can have a negative impact. Carrying on baggage is becoming more restricted as airlines remove those privileges from budget level tickets. This is especially problematic when our instruments absolutely must stay with us. If we have to bring additional mutes for just a few notes or bars, then the mutes become a travel liability. I don’t know exactly what the solution is for this. I have solved the problem in a small way by asking mute craftsman extraordinaire Gerry Birch of Peter Gane Mutes to make me a travel straight mute/cup mute combo that is very compact. In many respects, it is the best straight mute and cup mute I own and it is durable and compact for travel. It still doesn’t address the problem of the Harmon mute or other mutes I would like to travel with, though. I believe the best solution lies in an openness on the part of players, composers, and mute designers to continue to discuss these problems so that brass players continue to cultivate this part of our heritage and communicative color palette.

One does not simply walk into rehearsal…

In the entire time Gaudete has been working together, we have never had the luxury of living close enough to each other to avoid at least part of our quintet having a difficult commute on slow trains or in bad traffic. It is part of living in a great city like Chicago, and we all accept it with generally good humor. Problems can arise, however, when we sit down to make music together and some of the group had to trek through the barren wasteland of the grey packed-in snow of February and arrive tired from the commute. This is inconsequential when compared with the challenge of getting on the same page if people have dealt with difficult personal circumstances during the day or even if we have all just been involved in different musical activities. Coming to quintet from playing in an orchestra, playing sackbut in an early music group, or even a long day of teaching and then having to sit down and fit into the quintet isn’t easy. To paraphrase the cinematographic masterpiece Airplane!…

It's an entirely different kind of playing, altogether.

Fairly early on, Gaudete knew we needed a solution to this problem. We were working on increasingly more difficult repertoire, and we knew we needed to start our rehearsals with something simple that could allow us to be in the right frame of mind to make music together. The chorales from the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach have been used by many ensembles for this type of work in the past, so they seemed to be the perfect starting point. As we tried a few of the commercially available versions, we were frustrated that the common solution for making them into a brass quintet was just to double one of the parts (most often the bass). These versions did not really address the more complex task of working on perfect balance and intonation with 5 independent voices who must be constantly adjusting and rebalancing as the voicing and doublings shift through the ensemble as is common in the quintet repertoire. If the trombone and tuba are doubling the entire time, they must necessarily listen to each other first, leaving the upper three voices to adjust to them with little concession the other way. My solution was to choose a set of Bach’s chorales of varying harmonic complexity and set them for 5 voices, carefully adding a 5th voice that moves among the inner 3 parts and resembles types of voicing encountered in the quintet literature without changing the essence of the chorale. I left the soprano and bass parts unaltered. I assembled a small book of these, and we started each rehearsal playing them. Over the years, we have worked though the book, and we have found that the chorales are valuable for a number of reasons. Chorales are simple enough to focus on the basic essentials of chamber music like entrances, releases, matching articulation, intonation, balance, group coordination, and collaborative phrase shaping, while still being satisfying music and not simply a technical exercise. When Gaudete works on the chorales, we don’t leave a chorale until it is perfect. Sometimes, this can take a third of a rehearsal. Most of the time is doesn’t, but even if it does, this type of intricate, detailed work is a very efficient use of our time. The comparative simplicity of this music allows us to identify the problems and fix them before we tackle music where extreme ranges, rhythmic complexity, extended harmonic language, and challenge of the individual parts can confuse the fundamental issues critical to playing together as an ensemble at the highest level. If we take the time to really establish the basics on the chorale each day, we have found that those essential chamber music qualities that we hone within the chorale transfer to the more difficult music.

Playing these chorales and striving for all of the wonderful and elusive qualities of ensemble cohesion at the beginning of rehearsal also serves to bring us all together, reminds us of what we can achieve with regular rehearsals, and why we love playing chamber music. The opportunity to work on music in this detail is rare in the music world, where there never seems to be enough rehearsal time. The luxury of taking the time to go into great detail helps bring us into the right frame of mind after a difficult commute or a difficult day and reminds us how grateful we are to have the opportunity to play chamber music. 

Because these chorales have been so helpful to our quintet we want to share this choral book with as many quintets as possible. If you are interested in a free PDF copy of this book please send us an email at info@gaudetebrass.com

“I used to bull’s-eye womb rats in my T-16 back home. They’re not much bigger than two meters.”

This week Gaudete celebrates the release of our new album sevenfive on Cedille Records. It is something that we are very excited about. The album showcases 8 world premiere recordings of pieces that are now available to enhance and enrich the repertoire of brass players looking for great chamber music. It is a multifaceted menu for chamber music enthusiasts and ensembles. Conrad Winslow’s Records of the Lost Tribe creates a sense of the mysterious and numinous, like something unseen below the surface, a very deep and powerful work. David Sampson shatters all conceptions of brass needing to use volume to be expressive with his subtle and serene Still. Jonathan Newman’s Prayers of Steel allows the brass to sing, dance and groove through their instruments, the the hymn like 3rd movement is especially exquisite. Steven Bryant’s work, the title track sevenfive is a like solving a complex puzzle with a surprise solution at the end. Jeremy Howard Beck’s Roar is for players who are looking to express themselves with raw emotion and more than a little bit of rage.

It has been quite a journey from the commissioning and premieres of these pieces to the album  release and I thought it might be interesting to share how Gaudete prepares for some of the challenges of the recording session. One of the hardest aspects especially for brass players, since all of us are playing in to the microphones at the same time, is we all have to play note perfect all at the same time. Of course all musicians who record chamber music have this problem but as our producer Judy Sherman reminded us, “sometimes brass instruments just betray you.” We have all attended a concert where the errant note on the trombone or trumpet drew attention away from a otherwise engaging phrase. Takes with these errant notes can’t be used and we all have to do it right together. Any brass player knows that this is, while not perhaps “impossible” it is very difficult. 

Gaudete’s solution to the problem has been two-fold. Our first part of the process was to perform these works as many times as we possible could. This of course included our formal concerts but we also were fortunate to have a number of tours leading up to the sessions that featured many concerts for students in high school music programs. Learning to play a piece in a way that can capture the imagination of an audience of young people multiple times in a day is in our experience one of the very best ways to learn a piece of music really well. You have to play expressively or they will rightly lose interest and you have to be able to keep playing with only short breaks for many hours. In our experience nothing simulates a recording session better than this type of performing if it is treated as an incredible opportunity to share your music. 

The second solution was to simply practice recording. Bill Baxtresser one of our trumpet players regularly takes our group through this exercise as part of our preparation for all of the pieces we perform but the frequency increases as we approach a recording session date. Bill will set up his microphones, do level checks and we will start recording takes. Bill will take them home and master them so we have the best product we possibly can. We all listen and the work still remaining on a piece becomes apparent. Rehearsals become efficient, focused and more fun.