Every time I play “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, two thoughts always cross my mind:
This is some of the most moving and magnificent music ever composed.
What’s the deal with that marking three bars before 37? I mean, how exactly does one make a crescendo and decrescendo at the same time? ‘Must be some kind of Zen koan: the key to the enigma, perhaps?
Wow, what a busy few months it has been: lots of exciting projects with the orchestra, lots of travelling and performing in historic locations. Pictured here are scenes before performances in Gamle Scene, Copenhagen (playing guest principal trombone w/Odense Symphony); Ribe Domkirke (my first experience doing Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony), and Laieszhalle, Hamburg (Missa Solemnis). It’s a real privilege to be able to perform in these extraordinary venues!
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!
Another season — my 14th with Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester! — is in the books. We concluded this year with an outdoor performance for Tour de France. The ending of the third stage of the race was in Sønderborg, and we performed a light classics outdoor program for the occasion. The cyclists were routed right by our stage, and we performed John Williams’ Flying Theme from E.T. as they passed.
Pictured with me are my colleagues in the low brass section: Aline de Alcântara, Samuel Taber, and Pernilla Nilsson Brown. What a great group of people to work with! It was really a pleasure to play this fun but demanding program with them.
Each year, my orchestra collaborates with the German orchestra across the border, the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Sinfonieorchester. We typically play a large work we can combine forces to perform, and this year featured Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.
I was thrilled to play the tenor tuba part on this masterwork. Wow, what an experience that was! It was something that I had looked forward to doing that really lived up to the hype. Sitting there, being immersed in such dramatic, inspiring music was the kind of experience that I know I will always remember.
I also found it fascinating from an arranging/composing perspective to see how Strauss wrote for the tenor tuba in this piece. Sometimes, he would use tenor tuba for soaring melodies when they went out of range (i.e. too deep) for the horn. Other times, the tenor tuba was combined with the bass tuba to form a unit, a tuba section. The familiar tutti low brass parts were there as well, of course, but I also noticed that Strauss would occasionally use the tenor tuba in place of the bass tuba in a few chorales when it seemed like he wanted a slightly lighter, less dense sound in the low brass. There are also a few sections in which the tenor tuba is given some truly inspired counter melodies.
We were allowed to dress up in costumes for this year’s Halloween concert. I am a big Marvel fan, so I chose to go as Tony Stark. I made myself an arc reactor out of an under-cabinet light and found some sunglasses that matched Tony’s from the movies. Unfortunately, my arc reactor only changed color when you pressed on it. No luck activating a nano Iron Man suit.
I have to say that the most unrealistic thing about Tony Stark in the movies isn’t the nano suit, though. It has to be the idea that a superhero would use that much time every day on grooming his facial hair. I am looking forward to getting my lower-maintenance beard back!
***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!
After a COVID-19 scare in the orchestra over the weekend, our season can open this week with a Beethoven concert. Trombones are barely involved —we only play the overture — but I want to mention this concert briefly because our very limited part in it is so joyful!
So much of what is written for trombone is angry or solemn. We’re often either a monster attacking or a choir of monks. But this week, with the Fidelio Overture, our limited role is to add pure happiness.
Adding to my enjoyment of the Beethoven, I get to give my new Toby Oft alto trombone mouthpiece a go. Very cool!
