It’s funny how things start out. My story is not a particularly sexy one, but it is true. When I was in fourth grade the music teacher at our school came to my class. He had what I consider to be one of the greatest sales pitches of all time. He had only one question for us – “Who wants to get out of class for two hours a week?” My hand shot up so fast I nearly dislocated my shoulder. I mean honestly, who cares what you have to do, two hours out of class a week is a ...
How to tell the story of this picture? To tell you everything that this wonderful man did for me would take too much space. I will try to tell you enough so that you can get the gist of it and so that you can see that sometimes all it takes is one person to change your life. The man standing with me in this picture is Robert Jarrett. To this day I still call him Mr. Jarrett even though we have known each other for almost thirty years. Mr. Jarrett was my band director from the sixth through tenth grades. ...
That’s me and Jason Philpot in the seventh grade. We were playing a duet on the Iroquois Middle School Spring concert. I can’t remember the piece we were playing, but I’m pretty sure it had the word bugle in it somewhere. It seems like all the pieces back then were called bugle something or other. This would have been my first time playing any kind of solo or duet with a band. Though I can’t remember, I’m sure I must have been nervous. I had this opportunity because of my band director Mr. Jarrett. He had asked Jason and I ...
That’s me having just returned from band camp in Louisville, Kentucky. The camp was called Camp Crescendo and it was for marching bands. The idea was you would go there for a week and learn your halftime show for football games and also for marching band competitions. (Yes, my Canadian friends, there are marching band competitions.) There were lots of great things about band camp and I’m going to tell you about them, but first I am going to register a long standing complaint against Camp Crescendo. My complaint is simple. Why couldn’t you have doors on the bathroom stalls ...
When I was growing up I used to watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a lot. It wasn’t because I thought he was funny or because I liked Johnny. It was because I was always hoping to hear Doc play. It rarely happened, but when it did it was really incredible. What a player! I loved his sound - especially the high notes. This picture was taken in Buffalo at Kleinhans Music Hall. I won the Principal trumpet job there when I was twenty one. It was a one year position and I was super excited to get started. ...
This is a picture of Barbara Butler and me just a few days ago at a masterclass she gave for my school. It was fantastic! (For more about Barbara’s class stay tuned for some new information in my “Studio Corner” where there should be a review posted soon.) What to say about Ms. Butler? There are certainly a lot of memories and lessons that come to mind. One of the greatest things about Ms. Butler is that she is able to change her approach depending on the student. I was the kind of student who needed ...
There was a time in my life when I wasn’t so excited about playing the trumpet. I was in the Kansas City Symphony and for a variety of reasons the passion was on holiday and I was floundering with my playing. Where I had once gone to auditions and regularly made the finals, I was finding myself not making it past the first round. It was also evident at work; things that usually came easily to me started becoming difficult. I was at a crossroads and I didn’t know what to do. In the end I ...
This is a picture of the TSO trumpet section from 2002. From left to right are Jim Gardiner, Andrew McCandless, Jimmy Spragg and Bart Woomert. The twists and turns of life are always interesting to me. I knew from a young age that I wanted to play in a professional orchestra, and that I wanted to teach trumpet at the collegiate level. I never gave much thought to who I would play with or what they would be like. Would we get along? Would we have similar styles of playing? I’m fortunate to ...
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