| During the time I studied with Ghitalla I had to practice about 6 hours a day to prepare my lessons. I can't imagine what it would have been like to go into a lesson unprepared. He was dead serious in lessons and wouldn't hesitate to tell you if you weren't meeting his expectations. He wasn't the least bit interested in teaching anyone who wasn't disciplined.
The flip side was how generous he was with his students. He cooked for us all the time, and many of us learned to cook as a result. He was always willing to loan you equipment for an audition or gig, including great mutes, mouthpieces and trumpets. My first shot at Brandenburg wouldn't have been possible without his c pic.
When I taught at Penn State he was retired from U of M for awhile before taking the Rice job. He was living near Tanglewood. He came down and played a couple of two trumpet pieces on my faculty recital, practically for free.
I remember a few discussions with fellow students who felt Ghitalla was hard on them in lessons. These were the same folks who came back from vacations out of shape and weren't "that into" all the transposition he made us do.
At one point, after I had finished my formal study with him I was visiting him in Ann Arbor on my way to a Detroit S.O. audition. I played several mock auditions for him and probably only scratched one or two notes over several days of this. But he had heard me warming up and practicing downstairs and wasn't that thrilled with how I sounded. He told me to only play the excerpts and not let the committe hear me play anything else, even a chromatic scale, because they wouldn't be impressed.
Mr. Ghitalla was one of the warmest and most sympathetic people on the planet. In lessons, he was definitely "old school". |