trumpetnick

Dear Edward,

If you had to play the Ewazen's trio for violin, trumpet and piano and did not have an E flat trumpet would you choose a C trumpet or B flat. Seems that C trumpet sonority is nearer to E flat but generally it is more difficult to master on intonation level.

Second Question:

In the same concert for which I am preparing the Trio I plan to play few excerpts from the Sldier's tale. As I don't own a cornet I will be performing on my C trumpet. However, there is a moment, where in the score the cornet is switching from A to B flat cornet. Do you think it may be useful to change to B flat trumpet on that place (Devil's Dance)?

ecarroll

Nikolay,

I doubt that my old Juilliard classmate Eric would care at all what horn you play his music on. I don't play the trio (or any of his music)but have heard it performed a few times on C trumpet.

L'Histoire du Soldat is best played on the C cornet but the C trumpet will work. I see little reason to change horns in midstream (no real purpose) and you can try an old Vacchiano trick with the fast D7 arpeggio (C/A/F#/D/F#/A/C) in the Devil's Dance: extend the 3rd slide and play the D 2&3.

Someday I'll tell my Bulgarian snow storm story to our fellow TMers (Burgas to Sofia, a day late for a week-long residency at the conservatory). You live in a beautiful country, my friend. . .

Best,
EC

mahaberio

I also have never performed the Ewazen trio. However, due to its popularity, I have seen several performances of it, all exclusively on C trumpet.

As far as the Soldier's Tale, I like the cornet sound, but there's nothing stopping you from trying to achieve that on the C trumpet.

trumpetnick

Hi, guys!

Another Soldier's question. What do you think about performing it without a conductor? I am not going to perform all of it and tere is no a reader. The point is, that all other pieces don't need a conductor , and I am not willing to pay one just for something like about 15min music.

ecarroll

N,

A conductor (I've played it with Bernstein & Michael Tilson-Thomas, by the way :) ) is only needed when the entire work (three actors) is being produced. It's fine as chamber music otherwise.

Dan Rosenboom (a student of mine at CalArts) played it last Spring in LA with the newly-formed Grande Mothers of Invention (3 original Zappa members did the speaking roles -- great fun).

Also, there's a terrific Nagano-led recording on Pangea (John Wallace, cornet) that features Ian McKellen, Sting, and Vanessa Redgrave. Great to hear it narrated by Gandolf and Vanessa is a wicked devil indeed!

Cheers,
EC

loudog

I'm currently working on the Ewazen Trio for my MM recital, and am doing it on C trumpet. It lays just fine on it.

I did L'Histoire last year, C trumpet for the majority of the work, D TRUMPET for the Devil's Dance...that arpeggio is quite easy then (Bb-G-E-C-E-G-Bb).

Good luck!!

Louie

ecarroll

Lou,

Try Vacchiano's trick tonight?

EC

kjt

It's interesting to me that Eb trumpet appears the "choice" instrument here by your comment, as it only works on a 4-valve Eb--need some low notes that aren't on the 3-valve Eb unless you're into playing them as pedal tones. Also, it has muted passages and I've never been happy with any of the muting solutions on the smaller bell Ebs. I did, in fact, use Eb when I performed it (Schilke 4-valve w/ big bell), although I found it worked just fine on either C or Bb.

Ewazen told me that he was pretty sure that Phil Smith's recording was on Bb.

Keep in mind in preparing this that the trumpet part is the easiest of the three parts, so don't spend several months on your part then expect your fellow performers to get their part solid in a week.

That's probably true, but I'm not sure why people complain so much about playing this on Bb cornet, which I think works fine as long as you're OK with that A-Bb tranposition (which tends to be a little more of a mental exercise than it should be).

-keith

ecarroll

Keith,

The Bb cornet works just fine as well. I simply prefer the C (lighter).

Cheers,
EC

trumpetnick

Keith,

I may have given a wrong impression...I've just wrritten that I don't own an E flat. You normally get 2 trumpets parts with the violin and piano part. Probably you do know already that. The parts are scored either for E flat or C trumpet...Previously I believed that Phil Smith recorded it on C but I may be wrong. Myself, I have never seen someone playing the piece on E flat. But I have seen not many performances of the Trio and all of them were on C. Actually, the piece may have never benn played before in Bulgaria...I may be the first to perfrmorm in BG and surely I am the first one to perform it in my town...I always prefered the C trumpet for that kind of stuff, but wanted to have few opinions from americans trumpeters...What we do in Europe may be different from US...I mean the choice of the instrument. In France the choice will be surely C but they play almost everything on C. A London trumpeter (I may think of these great guys like Rod Franks, Maurice Murphy or Jimmy Watson with whom I had few trumpet lessons) will surely take a B flat...