eoliver

I'm Eric Olin Loren Oliver, born january 13, 1982 in Albuquerque, NM. Where I've lived my entire life. My Dad played cornet in grade school in Silver City, NM, and thought it would be good for me, so when 6th grade rolled around, I got my first Bundy cornet.

I started taking private lessons with a local french horn player who also taught beginning brass lessons immediately (thank you mom and dad) and soon began taking with local jazz legend kent erickson. Kent turned me to Bob Dorer, who I studied with until he was snatched away by Manny and Minneapolis. Upon his departure, I began studying with Doug Carlsen, until he was also taken from me by Manny and his orchestra. While studying with Mr. Dorer, I began high school, and was introduced to a sound I had never heard before, and never will forget. My high school band director, Mr. Bruce Kroken (who was a euphonium player, but could play a mean trumpet, and an especially mean high g) showed me a video he had of "Chase Live at Face's," which blew my mind. From there I discovered Maynard, Faddis, and so on. Luckily while I was learning from big band recordings and devouring all the lead and high note trumpet I could get my hands on (I am one of those guys, so sue me.), I was still under the direction of Mr. Dorer and Mr. Carlsen, who influenced me (and many other trumpet players in the Albuquerque area) more than I could say.

Before Mr. Carlsen left, he helped get me into the Interlochen arts camp the summer before my senior year. Coming from such an underpriveleged state, it was amazing to be with all these terrific musicians, with everything so concentrated.

After high school, I decided to stay local and go to UNM (mainly because of hormones and the girl I was dating) and now I still go there and am working very hard on finishing my BM in Jazz Studies. I must, however, mention my father, who always pushed me to do the best job I can do, and taught me to never allow myself to be limited by my situation. I have learned loads from Glenn Kostur, the director of Jazz Studies here, and, through my father's encouragement and support have managed to escape the black hole that is Albuquerque to study with and be inspired by other great trumpet players like Danny Falcone, Roger Ingram, and Wayne Bergeron.

Though the above people have inspired me in profound ways, I should mention a few people currently helping me expand my horizons.

Jeff Piper for helping me get started in the pit orchestras here in the Burque, and Jon Dante for helping me keep those gigs, and also just for being a monster all-around trumpet player.

And that is the story of the film so far. Cheers to all who have helped me along the way. I'll never forget you.

__________________
Eric Oliver
www.trumpetwitheric.com

PH

i love this thread! I promise I'll add my story to it soon.

Eric, it was great meeting you last week in Albuquerque.

Pat

joshuasullins

My name is Joshua Sullins. I started playing trumpet late in sixth grade. I had just moved from San Diego to a town called Sequim in Washington state. Most of the kids in my class were in band, but I was in home economics. I hated that, because I didn't know anyone in the class. One day, a counselor came into our class and said "we need people for the choir. anyone interested?" It got me out of home ec, so what the hell. Choir rehearsed everyday next to the band class, where all my friends were. Eventually it got to be too much, and I went to visit the band director, Mr. Dale Lund. He said I would have much catching up to do and that if I couldn't keep up, next year I woulud have to be in 6th grade band again. He basically told me that it was too late to start. Bump that. Someone told me I couldn't do something. I now realize that he just did that to egg me on and get me to practice. By seventh grade I had a private lessons teacher and was first chair.

In high school, I ruffled a lot of feathers. There were some politics involved in chair placement my freshman year. Putting a freshman as principle would have pissed too many seniors off, so Mr. Lund made me third, behind two seniors. It wasn't bad, but I didn't learn a thing from those guys. I started taking lessons from Roy Cummings at the University of Washington. He was such an inspiration and what a great guy. When I was a senior in high school, Mr. Cummings suffered a heart attack and passed away. Mr. Allen Vizzutti took his place at the University and I knew that I wanted to go there to study with him.

When I was a sophomore I went on the Sound of America European Concert Tour. This was probably the most important factor in making me a performance junkie. I met and played with jazz young lion Sean Jones. He was in my section that year. That was it for me. I knew I had to try and make a living at music. I also met my soon-to-be-wife (three more months...) on that tour, a beautiful young vocalist ;)

So I went to the University of Washington, studied with Vizzutti and Vern Sielert, who had great impacts on my playing. Vern is a wonderful bebop trumpet player. He taught me so much.

After college, I enlisted in the Navy Band Program and here I am, in Newport, RI! I play lead in the Northeast Navy Showband.

~Joshua Sullins

__________________
trumpet: Flip Oaked Wind Thing in gold plate, #1 Tuning Slide

piece: Monette PRANA BL3

Flugel: Yamaha 631, Rose brass bell (I really want a Flip Oakes Flugel... putting together the cash)

upoils

meet me -- Ken Saul (upoils)
My interest in the trumpet started when I was a kid and saw “The Music Man”. I really wanted to play one of those ‘76 Trombones’, but my older brother took it up and I decided on a close second, the trumpet. That was in 1965, when I was 10 years old. My elementary interest in music blossomed in the summers of my high school, when I attended a music camp (Camp Cazadero, in the beautiful wine country of Northern California). The counselors and teachers were largely from San Francisco State University and I grew to know and like them a lot. Even though I had taken every math, physics, and electronics class in my high school, and I was crazy about electronics, I became a music performance major at SFSU. I had five wonderful years as a student of Joe Alessi Sr., himself a disciple of Vacchiano and the New York school. Joe grew up with lessons from Harry Glantz, Schlossberg and Vacchiano and played for over a decade as principal trumpet with the Met Opera Orchestra. He was also a versatile player and played many Radio City Music Hall and Broadway gigs, including opening night of “Oklahoma” before he was drafted in WW2. After Joe left the New York scene, he played Vegas and then settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he raised his very talented sons, Joe Jr, and Ralph. He also studied with James Stamp and Claude Gordon and passed on a remarkable variety of past and present chop-building fundamentals to his students. Joe’s philosophy was that if you were set up correctly, you could play any style, so he really worked me hard to correct some serious embouchure problems of my youth. I completely credit Joe for the fact that I still play principal trumpet in a community/university symphony and teach students today (see http://oregonstate.edu/~saulk/).

My favorite trumpeters of my early years were Doc Severinsen, Maurice Andre, Maynard, and Clifford Brown. I really knew nothing about symphonic playing, and I came to love Miles after I was 30. I was decent at both a lead style and in jazz improve, but all my training was basically in the classical style, including all the orchestral excerpts, etudes, transpositions, and solo repertoire that trumpeters learn in college. I spent many happy hours transcribing solos of Clifford Brown and learning to play them approximately as they sounded on the recordings (although never as clean or as fast as Brownie created them!)

After my performance degree, I continued my music education in Composition as a student of Roger Nixon (of symphonic band music fame) and at the Juilliard School. At the time, my newly wedded wife was working full-time in the World Trade Center, and I was a full-time student and part-time employee at Schirmer Music. With New York expenses causing our savings to dwindle rapidly, my stint at Juilliard came to an end after only one year as I had to re-think my career path.

We retreated to San Francisco and I attended City College (no tuition!), where I received vocational training as an electronic technician. This got me a job with Hewlett-Packard in Corvallis, Oregon, where I have worked now for over 24 years (!). At HP, I continued my education at Oregon State Univ. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and completed my BSEE degree. Later, I received the MS in Engineering Management from NTU. At HP, I have been a technician, an engineer in various capacities, and an engineering project manager. Most of my patents are for the microelectronics inside the thermal inkjet print cartridges that have become such a great business in HP. I moved recently from management back to senior engineer to reduce some stress in my life and to refresh some of my technical skills. And this year, OSU hired me as a part-time faculty member to teach lessons to music education majors. I am having a great time teaching students again and look forward to my time in the studio after my work day is done.

As I write this, I am returning from a Thanksgiving weekend trip to see my son, now a student at Dartmouth College, double-majoring in music and something-else-to-be-determined. Music has always been a big part of my life, and has been a special bond for our family.

I also own Ultra-Pure Oils, which many of you know and love (thank you!!!). I developed Ultra-Pure Professional Valve Oil as a superior non-toxic lubricant after a great deal of experience with high-tech oils at my work with HP. I have worked in collaboration with some of the biggest and most advanced oil labs in the world to produce this formulation, which has received many wonderful endorsements (see http://www.ultrapureoils.com). In more recent years, I have added two weights of tuning slide lubes which work well and are also non-toxic. I am proud to support trumpetmaster.com as a sponsor.

Tomorrow I will go into the hospital for surgery (Nov 29). I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few months ago (at a very early stage) and I am looking forward to a full cure and a complete recovery. But it will mean several weeks off the horn (no weight lifting means I can’t play _or lift_ my Monette !) But I do plan on buzzing a flugelhorn mpc lightly after a few weeks. I’ll let you know how quickly I return to performance-level playing. Since I have several gigs in February, including a cornet solo (“Cousins”) with the OSU Wind Ensemble, it better happen by then. If you made it this far, thanks for getting to know me!
-Ken
ken@ultrapureoils.com

Anonymous

That is one heck of a story Ken Very Interesting. I have been using your oil for a couple of days now and I must say it kicks a#$! I had been using Hetmans but this stuff is incredible!

Solar Bell

Ken--
Love your oils!

Praying that you will fully recover.

-cw-

__________________
Chuck Willard
The Willard of Oz

"Don't be afraid to see what you see."
Ronald Reagan

upoils

Hi everyone at trumpetmaster. I am back home now, recovering from prostate surgery. The surgery appears to have gone well and the pathology report said the tumor was confined to the prostate, so I am looking forward to a complete cure and a speedy return to trumpet playing! I was able to do my lip push-ups while in the hospital (James Stamp exercises) and they also gave me a VOLDYNE inspired volume tool so I could work on breathing deeply. Prostate surgery takes the wind out of you and it is important to breathe deeply to avoid pneumonia. Although I can only inhale 2 liters, it is up from 1 liter a few days ago. And I started buzzing my lips a little today.

Update: 12/12/05: Well, my surgery was 2 weeks ago and yesterday I was able to play for about 15 minutes (Stamp #3, Kopprasch #13, various tonguing exercises, and the Mahler 3rd posthorn solo down one octave on flugelhorn). Pretty much anything quiet and soft. If it is any consolation to those of you who may be facing surgery in your abdomen and wondering how long it will take before you are playing again, I would say that you won't play at all for a few weeks, but then things will start to pull together pretty quickly. And thanks for all your kind notes!

Update 12/24: My healing is going better than I expected. Yesterday I oiled up the piccolo and played through Cantata 51 which I will perform this spring. No problem. And I am able to play about 40' in a stretch now on Stamp #3, #4, tonguing exercises, slurs, etudes (Kopprasch) and whatever I open to in the Arbans. It has been quite an experience climbing back up the ladder! My wind capacity is up to 3.5 liters, which is probably where I left it before surgery. I still find that I play more comfortably sitting down than standing. Playing while standing still makes me dizzy, so I'll stay seated for now.



See you,
Ken

Clarence

So Mr. mmccourt, are u gonna put anybody on Blast tonight!

__________________
You heard it here 1st, in what ever u do if u buy the ticket u take the ride!
Stage 1XH Bb
Phaeton 2030 Bb
Jupiter flugle 846bl black
Kersting Pocket trumpet
Stage1 MP
schilke 11 MP
Sdsytems LCM77 wireless
Shure PGX wireless

jdshankles

Hey Manny,

Just wanted to introduce myself to ya. My name is Jonathan Shankles Davis and I live in Rochester, MN. I am 23 and have been playing the trumpet since I was 10. I am Middle School Ministry Coordinator at a church in Rochester.

I graduated from St. Olaf in 2004. I studied with Marty for about 5 years and still continue to take a lesson every couple of months. I also studied with Chuck Lazarus for about two years as well. They were certainly a significant influence as a trumpet player and as a person. I have met you a couple of times through masterclasses at Olaf and after Minnesota Orchestra concerts.

I would say that the biggest life-changing event for me musically was taking a year completely off of the trumpet. I was too involved in the "head game" of trumpet (ie. well, maybe if I tighten my right pinkie toe, then I will be able to play high). After that year off, I finally was playing for the right reasons, THE MUSIC! I figured out what it meant to be relaxed when playing.

As of now, I teach about 9 students and I play in the Rochester Concert Band and at church. I'd like to find an orchestra gig somewhere though...

Oh yeah...I like to wear bowties...

Thanks for your help on the forum!

--JD

BBLeadTpt90

Hey guys,
I'm Brent Baker, and i'm 15 years old. I was born and raised(and am still being raised) in Austin, TX. I have been playing trumpet for almost five years now (and i realize that most of the people have been playing longer than i have been alive). I currently am a Sophmore in high School, and play in the wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, and Outdoor Performing Ensemble (marching band). I really don't have much to say about my carreer, simply because it's so short.... I study with Dan Laufer (one of my biggest influences) and hope to continue to progress musically. One of my biggest events that changed me musically was going to the WIBC clinic in Seattle. The clinic really made me open my eyes and heart to the world of music. Also, i got to see hundreds of trumpets... Another experience was hitting my first double 'c'... believe it or not, i was in seventh grade... i'll try to post a video of me playing one now... Some of my classical influences are: Maurice Andre, Charles Schluter(spelling), Manny, Rolf Smedvig, phil smith, bud herseth (i'm so sad about his retiring.... over 50 years on the job...) and too many others to name... Jazz influences: Maynard Ferguson, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis (classical too!!), Chet Baker, Chris Botti (love the contemporary jazz), Arturo Sandoval, Bill Chase, and James Morrison (he's the beast from the land down under). Another huge influence is Dave Monette... i think most people would agree with me when i say that it would be nice to be able to get away with selling a horn for over 10,000 dollars...

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Brent Baker