Trust: The Discipline of Vulnerability Part 2: Timing Structure makes scale possible.Timing makes scale stable. Trust makes scale sustainable, and this is the uncomfortable one. In the horn section, you cannot play someone else’s instrument for them. You can prepare.You can listen.You can support. But when the entrance comes, they are responsible for their note. And you are dependent on … Read more
Timing: Leadership Has Tempo Part 1: Structure Architecture without tempo just sits there. You can design a clean system. You can define ownership. You can document everything properly. And it can still fail if the timing is wrong. Horn players learn this early. Oh, the wonders of being able to play almost an entire scale with one valve. Treacherous. Trombonists, … Read more
Creation, catastrophe, and a wall of horn sound This week’s gigs with the KSO put me in the third horn chair. A thankless position, really. Not principal. Not second. Not the flashy exposed heroics or the harmonic glue everyone politely ignores. Third horn lives in the interior, structural, supportive, occasionally ominous, frequently essential. It’s an inspiring place to sit. By … Read more
Horn player musings of creation – from the second performance. Warm-Up Warm-up is a strange place. Nothing officially counts, yet everything matters. Notes are tested, breath is measured, confidence negotiated quietly with physics. It is preparation, but also possibility. Looking down between my feet during warm-up, I saw it again. New universes. Not fully formed. Not confident. Small clusters and … Read more
Program notes for a universe formed during intermission – Performance night one. Observed shortly before intermission. Note the presence of the creator’s feet for scale, accountability, and mild judgment. At first glance, skeptics will say the image above is just a spill.Condensation. Gravity doing what gravity does. A little gross, maybe inconvenient, but ultimately meaningless. That theory collapses under even … Read more
Crazy thoughts? We all have them from time to time. But this weekend, I had a doozy. Sitting in rehearsal with The Symphony of the Mountains for our side-by-side concert of Movie Music with area high schoolers, I was playing along when—like all brass players must—I needed to empty my slides. (“spittious-accumulatious” for the uninitiated.) I looked down at the … Read more
January 19, 2025 – 9:45 AMDiary of a Snowbound Visionary, Volume II: The Cold Strikes Back Dear readers of frostbitten chronicles, The week since Snow-pocalypse 2025: January Edition has been one of reflection and stubborn snow. Despite temperatures attempting a feeble rebellion midweek (a balmy 50 degrees on Thursday, practically tropical), stubborn patches of icy defiance clung to shaded corners, … Read more