I still play jazz, and I’ve always got that trumpet very handy, but I’m coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.
I didn’t want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn’t like me. So I never practiced.
As time passed on, got to hear some players who were straight up funky, not just jazz. Nat Adderley, for instance – he’s a funky trumpet player, so he was my man.
The best part of the high school in Hastings must have been the Music Department. Its orchestra and concert band did well in county competitions, and the dance band formed by its students was the best in the region. I played lead trumpet in all of them.
My parents pushed me toward trombone because they didn’t need another trumpet player.
With my trumpet voice, I love gritty, plunger, growly sounds. But vocally, I love Anita O’Day – a raspier but definitely softer sound. Part of the fun has been finding vehicles or writing for both of those sounds.
To play the trumpet, you have to use that diaphragm, and it’s the same if you want to sing correctly. You really need to push it out from there. And I think that’s what has kept me going as a singer.
I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano.
I do a mean mouth trumpet.
I’m a terrible drummer; I almost cannot play the guitar nor sax nor trumpet.
Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were ‘militants’ – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed.
I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her – she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she’d just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I’m not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it’s as a craftsman.
For me to want to play the trumpet was a very, very odd thing for my clan as a whole. One of my uncles was a high school principal, and he referred to my trumpet as a bugle, which really hurt me.
My hearing has suffered seriously; just now I am obliged to have the assistance of an ear trumpet. Think of that, my beauty! – There ‘s a state for your old Lover to be in! – No more tender whisperings! Imagine sweet confessions to be made through an ear trumpet!
I wrap my heart in yours, placing divulged faith in the whole of your being, wistfully awaiting the trumpet you return.
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