TromboneLessons.com Video Podcast

Snow day in Atlanta, so I invited some friends over to the house to try out the Griego Mouthpieces that were sent to me by Jeff Taylor. Thanks, Jeff! Man, we had fun and I really love the feel and sound of the Deco Silver 5. Bravo. I plan on trying them all and letting folks around here do the same. If you are going to be in the area (Atlanta, GA) and want to try them, contact me via email and LET’S PLAY: tom@trombonelessons.com

I love trying new stuff, especially when it’s of such high quality as these mouthpieces. Jeff can be contacted for more info at this address: jefftaylor@griegomouthpieces.com

The Griego website is here: http://www.griegomouthpieces.com

So, Bill brought his contra, I grabbed an alto, Tom swapped the tuba for a Conn 88H, and Brent held court on his bass trombone…..and we had ourselves a “hang”. A really fun afternoon it was.

Also in this episode, I answer some accumulating Viewer Mails. Thanks for all of those and don’t fret if I haven’t gotten to yours yet. We’ll strive hard to get to them all, promise.

Please enjoy this episode and let us know your thoughts. As always and forever, peace.

Let’s all go practice now. We gotta keep getting better to make more and more Trombone Love for this crazy world of ours, right? Collectively, we can make some noise!

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***PARENTAL WARNING: in this Episode, I endorse the consumption of beer. “Sweetwater 420″, as a matter of fact, brewed right here in Atlanta.***

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Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve seen Episode 49, you’ll know what this is all about. Today, Colin came to “the lair” and we did a drawing for the upcoming “Viewer’s Choice Recital”. It was one of the most suspenseful and stressful moments of my life:-)

Wait until you see how it all played out…………..enjoy!

I talk about a review of Colin playing the Creston a few years ago with the Atlanta Symphony. Here’s the review:

“Review: ASO plays Creston on trombone By Pierre Ruhe | Friday, October 1, 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

…..This week, the ASO helped revive a worthy composer from irrelevancy. Paul Creston (1906-1985) didn’t live to see a concert-hall revival of his music, but nowadays you can hear all his important works on CD and, increasingly, experience them live.

Creston’s music is “an embodiment of the affirmative, lyrical, melodic strain that dominated American music in the 1930s and for a time afterward,” wrote critic-conductor Will Crutchfield in an obituary. Creston rightly joins the company of Copland, Piston and Barber.

Creston’s 1947 Fantasy for Trombone, one of his best-known works, served to introduce the ASO’s principal trombonist, Colin Williams, who joined the orchestra three years ago and is now making his official solo debut.

In the jazzy Fantasy, Williams was heard, finally, to his advantage. In the treacherous Symphony Hall acoustic, the orchestral trombones’ warm bass notes get absorbed by the stage walls and the bright high notes get polarized to a blinding glare, like sunlight off a swimming pool. At stage front, we heard Williams au natural: his clean, “white” tone, with very little vibrato and exceptionally pure and lovely soft notes.

And for the ASO, with their committed playing this week and last, they showed that it’s likely the romantic vs. modernist argument will seem quaint in another generation. This would follow the Wagner (progressive) vs. Brahms (retro) debates, which eventually subsided, leaving both men on the winning side. What survives isn’t ideology, it’s good art. As an encore, Williams and the orchestra played “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” an amusing and sentimental work by Arthur Pryor, the trombonist in John Philip Sousa’s band a century ago. Where the Creston was unfailingly polite, Pryor asks the soloist to scale heights, blow elephant calls and raspberries, all accompanied by oom-pah-pahs from the orchestra. Williams breezed through the moto perpetuo variations with mostly machine-drilled aplomb.”

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