drac

Sorry for the lame topic but people ask me to play for them all the time. And invariably, after all my years of playing I draw a blank. I end up playing some lame scales or some cheesy rif from Hummel or something. Anyway, just wondering what other people play when put on the spot! Maybe we need to publish something.........

MUSICandCHARACTER

Maybe it is the Maynard influence in my life (I loved what he did in the 70s) but I always play Mac Arthur Park. It is lively, most people know it, and I start on a B and finish on a double D.

Hummel is great for showing technique especially, but besides classical fans and trumpet players, it is not widely known (but I admire anyone who plays it well!).

M&C

FreshBrewed

I pull out a book and do some sightreading or I just play something like Night in Tunisia.

BamaJPB

Alpine Symphony.......COLD, and absolutely no warm up, a warm up would constitute weakness

JB

TangneyK

Autumn Leaves or a blues.

--Kevin

BADBOY-DON

Usually when asked to play????
GOOD QUESTION???
That depends huh?
For example....When someone asked you to play somethin' just for the curiousity of it:

I usually just love to go for my trade mark "Flight of the Blubba'flubba'bee" with that fun and gloriously wild intro cadenza with a flare'...
followed by a 59 sec flight through a condensed version of the tune with that beautiful compact ending.

This way....you are warmed up the easy way...and ready to show da folks just how beautiful your trumpet voice is....OR ISN'T? N'ALLTHATJAZZ?

Be forewarned however......It all depends on who is "asking to hear you play?" I got quite a laugh at a Sandoval clinic in Tacoma when he asked me to play a quick candenza....Most of the players their were rollin' the ear-n'-eyeballs...but Aurtro just laughed (as he knew where I was coming from) He smiled and said...
"Not too bad, but let me give you an illustration on a better and faster fingering technique....and then he picked up that horn of his and give all of us the most amazingly perfect rendition of how it should have sounded.

(He recognized me from a clinic that he had conducted in Seattle from a year before....and asked if I would be his "example."
In some sort of weird way....How nice to be remembered by a world class icon to be a tool in one of his clinics.
(Gads!...My Flight of the Flubba'Bee, must have been memorial, for him to remember...how horrifically funny, my rendition was that day over a year before? However Sandoval must have known that I didn't have an ounce of pride and craved the attention...GOOD OR BAD!

Tim80

Stella By Starlight is one of the few tunes I've memorized since I started playing again. So it gets the nod if some one is foolish enough to ask to hear me play.

dbacon

Improvise something, first legato in the style of Ray Mase. Expand to other styles, whatever the muse says.

Great way to warm up each day.

TangneyK

Now I might sound ignorant when I ask this Dave (won't be the first time though...), but who is Ray Mase?

I was in a clinic with Tim Hagans, and he said one of the best ways to improve your improv was to just play free legato... Don't think time, harmony, dynamics, etc. Just MELODY. I wonder if this is the same thing...

--Kevin

bugler16

Ray Mase is a Trumpet prof at Julliard and the 1st trumpet of the American Brass Quintet, as well as many other things. Just type his name into yahoo and I'm sure that you'll find lots of info.