South Bend

I made a trip over to South Bend yesterday along with Kristin and Dave Elbrecht. I have been in the market for a good C trumpet to call my own for a while now and decided that Quinlan and Fabish was not going to be able to gather enough instruments for me to try and I did not just want to order one and pray that it was good. This left me with only one other feasible option, not wanting to buy online for the same reason. I made the trip to South Bend to try whatever horns Woodwind and Brasswind had in stock. Turned out they had 3 of the 4 I most wanted to try. With the help and guidance of two other musicians with well developed ears, I was able to take a mix of how they sounded vs how they felt to me and make a very good decision. I wound up with the best of three Chicago Cs from the Bach Stradavarius line. I found it interesting how much variance there can be between 3 instruments of the exact same make and model. It wasn't incredibly easy settling on picking one of the three Chicagos either though. The Philadelphia gave them a run for their money as it had a much clearer and more centered low register than the first Chicago I had been brought. Luckily, I tried the other two Chicagos and now have a horn that nearly matches the clarity of the low register on the Philadelphia while still presenting me with the ease of playing found in the first Chicago. I'm a satisfied Bach customer once again. To top off the fact that I got the best of the instruments there...there was a 10% off deal running on in store purchases, so I saved a good 250 dollars, plus my 300 dollar rebate courtesy of the guys I talked to at the IMEA convention in Indy a few weeks ago.

A quick note to extend my apologies to the majority of my readership, who really don't care about clarity in various registers or ease of playing on trumpets, but you are all, I'm certain, aware that on my blog the good and entertaining posts far outweigh the boring technical music jargon posts. Sometimes you just have to take the good (entertaining) with the bad (boring). My blog is no different.

Last night, I performed on 4 numbers by VU composers and VU alumni composers. The concert was a lot of fun, some pieces much better than others. Perhaps the coolest piece I got to play was a composition for Viola, Clarinet, Trumpet, Vibes, and Piano by VU alumn, Rich Ortiz. http://www.rlomusic.com/composition.html

If you scroll about 2/5 of the way down the page and click on one of the three movements of the piece Three for Five you can listen to a slightly less polished performance of the piece than what occured with the ensemble I played in last night. Still a pretty sweet piece though. Third movement is definitely my favorite.

I promise a non-music inundated post in the near future with some interesting/entertaining things I've done or heard recently, but I'm quite excited at the moment by my new baby...the Chicago C.