It was interrupted by COVID, but we’re back on track with our every-other-year productions of operas from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. This collaboration with Den Ny Opera has absolutely been a career highlight for me.

Everybody has dreams, and one of mine has been to perform the bass trumpet part for the ring cycle. I’ve loved The Ring since I was a teenager, when I would join my dad in watching the operas on DVD together, following along with the full score. I got interested in the bass trumpet part when I lived in Seattle in the early 2000s. The Seattle Symphony’s first trombonist in those days was David Ritt. He played the bass trumpet in the Seattle Opera productions of the operas, and had also done so with the Metropolitan Opera. Hearing David play excerpts from The Ring and talk about his experiences performing it really inspired me. What a thrill to be able to have my own chance to play this wonderful music!

I’ve just uploaded a little excerpt from Das Rheingold, which we did a few years back. This year, it’s Siegfried. Time to get practicing!

***The videos on the linked webpage seem to be down. I will check into what happened and see about providing a new link to the performance I describe here.***

Recently, I worked on a project with Pernilla, Isabella Harritz Sorensen, and Patricio Soto in which we created a video of an improvised performance. It’s called “A Series of Conversations,” and ours is “Conversation 1.” I had never done anything like this before! It was invigorating, challenging — a bit terrifying — but also just plain fun. I am hoping we can do this again sometime, perhaps even live.

Ahead of time, Pernilla and I discussed a general outline of tonal areas we’d be covering, as well as a general structure to the piece. We also did a few takes with Isabella so she could get an idea of what kind of things we’d be playing and coordinate her movements with us. We were in good hands with Patricio, who had many creative ideas about how best to capture what we were doing on film. (Patricio is the one who did the photos of me for this website.)

Here’s a live video recording of Thorvald Hansen’s brass quintet featuring my colleagues from Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester (South Denmark Philharmonic) and me.

It is a pleasure to play with these guys and gal!