mahaberio

Earlier this year trumpet Mark O'Keeffe released his debut recording of several new works for solo trumpet. Mark teaches at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and is also principal trumpet of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The reason I bring up this recording is that it is quite simply a rare find. The level of playing and musicianship is out of this world and the repertoire performed is equally as noteworthy. All but two pieces on this disc (one by Davies and one by Turnage) are self-commissions and most by fairly unknown Scottish composers.

This is the kind of recording and performance that we need much, much more of. It's not that I don't appreciate the classics, but for my $20 (or more to attend a professional live performance) I want to hear something I can't hear anywhere else. What I'm sure makes this so special for Mark is that these are his pieces, they were written for him, and he is probably the only one who has performed most of them. This makes it equally as special to us as listeners because we're exposed to music that otherwise wouldn't exist. I'm not saying that our repertoire should consist of only music that has been written for us, but what if we all went out and commissioned just one piece? How many composer friends do you have? Creating something completely new gives us an edge as performers and that's exactly what we need. Mark is without a doubt a phenomenal trumpet player on a level that we can all aspire to, but he aspires to much more than that. The Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst said "I'm doing 80% classical repertoire, so that's the core of my work, and one first performance every year plus maybe two or three new smaller pieces. That's quite a small part but it's an important part, because that's how you make music history today."

Thoughts? Comments?

P.S. Sorry for the misspelling in the thread title. His name does indeed have two F's in it.

ecarroll

Matthew,

Sorry about this tardy reply. Too many timezones, too few brain cells.

Thank you for the quote cited above. If we consider music to be an art form (I'm certain everyone here does) and ourselves to be artists (I hope everyone here does?), then it's vitally important to contribute.

Mark O'Keeffe is a stellar example. He could be content simply playing out each season with his orchestra (principal trumpet of the Scottish Beebe), but instead creates important projects of his own. Mark won the Creative Scotland Award a few years ago for his terrific project called Apocolypse -- a quick youtube search might reveal clips from it -- and I was hono(u)red to play a small part in helping him with the text of his application. I believe that Apocolypse actually turned into his dissertation for a Ph.D at St. Andrews. John Wallace was his advisor on that.

Mark is a wonderful guy and a sensational player. A quick search of the EC Downloading archive (tm) will reveal him as one of my original "players to watch". I'm glad that you're doing so and hope other TMers follow your example!

Best,
EC

Khora

Matthew-

Do you have the title of the album handy? I know I'm a lazy slug, but it would help to know exactly what I'm looking for!

Thanks

Sandy

mahaberio

Sandy,

Even better, here's a link:

Castle Classics Trumpet Collections

Khora

Thanks! I wasn't having any luck finding it under Knight Errant....

davidquinlan

I wasn't aware that Mark had recorded a CD. I've just ordered a copy.

Mark was my teacher a few years back!