Tom Hooten Trumpet Workshop

[THooten]

Hi everyone!
I wanted to let you know about a workshop that I'm doing on Aug. 24th. Copied here is the info. I teach many lessons throughout the year, but I wanted to be able to dive a little deeper in a longer day session into various topics. I hope to see some of you there!

Best,
Tom

Thomas Hooten's Brass Workshop (Sponsored by Caltech Performing and Visual Arts)- held on 8/24/19. An engaging and structured day of master classes, lectures, and performances from Principal Trumpet of the LA Phil, Thomas Hooten. If you are a student, brass player, or musician who wants to increase their general knowledge of how to win auditions, succeed at performing, and create a routine for success, this day is for you!

Lunch will be catered! Snacks will be provided throughout the day!
Official Ticket Purchase Link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/thomas-hooten-brass-workshop-tickets-2086325255
Hooten Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2076192246017224/

[Ricsim88]

[Derek Reaban]

Hi Tom,

I’ve purchased a ticket for your workshop. Really looking forward to the day!

Thanks,

Derek
_________________
Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

[Derek Reaban]

I left my office in Phoenix at 3:15 PM on Friday afternoon for the drive to Pasadena to attend the Tom Hooten Brass Workshop on Saturday. I had Tom’s albums, "Trumpet Call" and the new "Hooten Plays Williams" loaded on my phone and listened to each album several times on the drive to California. Wow. What great literature and great playing. Having worked up the Honegger Intrada for several auditions, I really enjoyed Tom’s interpretation and effortless delivery, and kept hitting the track up button to hear his amazing sound at the beginning several more times. And the John William’s Trumpet Concerto was simply spectacular!

I woke up early, got a practice session in, found some breakfast, and then drove to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) campus where the workshop was being held. After arriving on campus and driving around looking for parking garage 3, I discovered that it was literally under the multi-use Caltech sports field (baseball and soccer) – talk about an efficient use of space! I went down several levels, found a good parking spot, got my horn out and played through a Rochut etude. The sounds bouncing back off the fully enclosed giant concrete space was a trumpet players dream!

As I left the garage, I saw a group of trumpet players ahead of me and began walking in the same direction. There were several well positioned signs that guided us to the Hameetman Center where the workshop was being held. Before I checked in I starting looking for this really cool wall at the Hameetman Center that I had read about on-line that was made up of nearly 400 engraved bricks that had been in a fireplace within the previous Caltech student center from the 1930s. What an impressive way to preserve a big part of the history of this campus!






After checking in with Ryan Svendsen (who did a fantastic job organizing this event) and finding a good seat, I filled out the Questionnaire that Tom asks players to fill out before they have a lesson with him, so that he can better understand their journey and give a picture of what they hope to achieve through short term and longer term goals. There were two questions that I wasn’t sure what he was looking for about "language habits", that turned out would be a focus in the workshop and a major tool in addressing a player's mindset for future improvement. As the room began to fill up, it was clear that this was going to be a well-attended event and I would guess there were close to 50 people there.




I took really good notes for the two lectures that were presented and pictures of the six participants in the master class. Over the next week or so, I’ll provide a number of posts that highlight main points from the workshop: A lecture on "Honesty & Integrity", Master Class with six performers, a lecture on "Practicing / Auditions / Preparation & Managing Your Nerves", Recital, Q&A.

This was an exceptional day, and if you have the opportunity to attend a future Tom Hooten Brass Workshop, I would highly recommend it!
_________________
Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

[Derek Reaban]

Masterclass

Haydn Trumpet Concerto



Jack (a lawyer who is principal trumpet in several local symphonies) was the first participant in the masterclass and he chose to play the first movement of the Haydn Trumpet Concerto. After a very good opening, Tom commented that his playing was strong, all of his mechanics were working very well, but the internal pulse could be better. After a few suggestions, Tom asked if he had the accompaniment part, and Jack happened to have the piano sheets on his chair. Tom went over to the piano, pulled the piano cover back, sat down at the bench, and said "Let me give you a brief introduction and then you play the opening phrase". Immediately, Jack was locking into the great time that Tom was setting up on the piano, and his overall playing took on a new character. (And the expressions of those in the audience that didn’t know Tom was an excellent keyboard player was simply a treat to watch!). Jack’s overall playing took on more confidence when he was able to lock into a great accompaniment.

While these aren’t the exact words that Tom used, he said rhythm and time must be internalized. The more confidently that you can sing in rhythm, the stronger the music will be in your mind. Later in the day, Tom would talk about Time and Pitch, and he said that these are "Objective" qualities and are either correct or not correct. If a player can do these two things better than 80% of the players at an audition, they will have a very strong chance of advancing, even if sound and style (which are more subjective) are not quite as strong.


Pictures at An Exhibition



Derek Gong (a freshman at a community college in Southern California) chose to play the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition. His sound was good, and after a miss on the last Ab, Tom starting talking about air delivery. While there was quite a discussion, what I liked best as a takeaway was when he said, "Head voice is a great tool for positioning the body for releasing the air". He said many trumpet players (to use vocal language), want to try to push the chest voice up to the higher register. He said, "We are sopranos!". We need to embrace the head voice. I liked this, and felt it captured the idea very well. Derek had some success with this as he approached releasing the air as he played. Tom demonstrated a gesture with his right arm and asked Derek to mimic this same motion as he played a note – showing release of the air – and had a very difficult time getting his arm to move as Tom’s did. Once he directed his attention to his arm, and took the mental focus away from his breathing, the breathing relaxed and he experienced what Tom was looking for.


Mozart Horn Concerto No. 4



Allison (a grad student in horn performance) played the first movement of the Mozart Horn Concerto No. 4. She had an excellent sound and a great deal of refinement in her playing. At one point, Tom stopped her and asked her to bend the starting pitch down a half step and said that this "encourages healthy resistance". She said that she had just recently heard about bending pitches and was very new to the idea. Tom demonstrated the concept of bending a note down a half step and then returning to the original pitch, but try as she might, she could not get any noticeable movement on the pitch. He had her move down in her register where there was more room between the partials to get the bend to happen, and she had a little more success, but still not anywhere close to a half step bend. Then Tom had her come at the bend from the other direction with a little more success.

This is something that I wrote in the past on this this concept (taken directly from Special Studies for Trumpet by John Daniel) to help illustrate Tom’s example with Allison: On trumpet, play a first space F# with your 2nd valve. Once the note is well centered, then lift the second valve, but instead of allowing it to go up to a second line G, keep the pitch of the F#. This will cause your embouchure to engage in a way that is slightly different than what you feel when bending the note down. I like to go back and forth between the F# (2nd) and F# (Open) several times slowly to really establish the feel of the exercise. The goal is to make the pitch identical between the two valve combinations and this moves your embouchure to what I would call a “middle ground” position. This is the forward embouchure with some cushion that should be used for playing in all registers.

After returning to the Mozart it was clear that there was something more vibrant in her sound. I know that this has been a really effective technique to add vibrancy in my sound, and I’m glad Tom uses this as a tool with students.


Incantation, Threne et Danse



Anna (a new student of Tom’s from South Korea with recent success at the NTC) played the first movement from Alfred Desenclos’ Incantation, Threne et Danse. I was familiar with this piece because of listening to Tom’s CD Trumpet Call on the drive over from Phoenix. WOW! Anna sounded fabulous! She had a very vibrant, exciting sound. Tom commented on rhythmic precision of the opening phrases, but for the strong majority of the audience, myself included, it was just very modern writing and not familiar enough to make a distinction between what we were hearing, and what was printed on the page. Anna clearly benefitted from this, and then he moved on to the next concept.

What I found to be absolutely fascinating was his discussion of sound colors with Anna. He commented that with the sound of the high strings that play the accompaniment leading in to the opening trumpet phrase, you need to have a lot of complexity in your sound to cut thought that high voicing. He commented that sometimes in the orchestra he is competing with the cymbals and needs to have a more metallic (ZZZZZZ) in the sound. He borrowed a straight mute and said that a mute doesn’t make the trumpet softer, it just gives it a different color. So he played the opening note of Incantation with the straight mute in, and said we needed to focus on the mute color, and keep that color in the sound after we take the mute out. He demonstrated this, taking the mute out as he was still playing, and it was amazing to hear his normal core sound take on much more vibrancy!

Anna already had a lot of that vibrancy in her sound, so it wasn’t as pronounced when she tried this herself, but the idea that Tom demonstrated was new to me and I thought very powerful. I will certainly give this a try in the future to see what it does for my playing.

And we should all watch for Anna in the future! She is quite a player!


Kennon Sonata



Jake (early college) played the opening, and while it was clear that he was a dedicated student, it was very apparent that he was working very hard physically with respect to sound production. Tom clearly related to his playing approach (he had shared the challenges that he faced as a student in college and a major embouchure change going into grad school), and asked Jake what note he would typically play at the start of his practice day. Jake said he normally started on a second line G. Tom said "you really need to move that up an octave" so that you’re not reaching so far for the upper notes (i.e. raising his overall set point or focal point). And then he shared an exercise that he said he got from Vincent DiMartino:

After removing the tuning slide, playing the mouthpiece leadpipe combination (MLC) alone produces several pitches. The first is a Concert Eb (bottom of the staff), followed by a Concert F (i.e. an interval of a 9th above the Eb), then a high Concert C, and finally a high Concert F. Tom said, the focus is on producing this pitch very efficiently, to make it as easy as possible. He said 3 or 4 times a week, at the beginning of his first practice session, Jake should start on the MLC and play the Concert F (9th above the first Eb) for 15 seconds and then take a short break. Then play the same Concert F for 30 seconds with a longer break. And then 45 seconds with a break and finally 1 minute. The goal is to help the aperture become smaller and the overall embouchure more efficient. Once the Concert F is happening with less physical effort (weeks or months), then you can add the Concert C above that and "yodel" between the two pitches (not loud, but as efficiently as possible). Once that is working then play from F up to C up to the next F and then yodel between the High F and the High C. Jake managed to get the high Concert C, and then tried for the next F and found a very tiny piece of it. I think this is clearly going to help him find more ease in sound production! Bravo to Tom for providing this great approach for improvement!

I found this Vincent DiMartino masterclass from the National Trumpet Competition in 2014 with a great description of this exercise (at about 29:40, 39:24: 42:30 and 51:42).

I’m definitely going to plug this into my regular routine!


Petrouchka



Eddy (early college) began playing and while he had clearly worked this except up, there were areas that Tom immediately found for teaching moments. The first area of focus was the physical movement in Eddy’s upper body while he was playing. As the musical line ascended, his bell would come up, and as the musical line descended, his bell would come down. Tom walked over and said, start at the beginning again, and held his hand over the top of Eddy’s bell. After the first three note phrase, he started the arpeggio up to the F, hit Tom’s hand and stopped playing (we all laughed, and Eddy did too, so you could see he had a good sense of humor). Tom then described to him why it’s important to minimize big movements so that we have a better chance at centering all the notes with a great sound, and asked him to try again. He didn’t get it the first time, but the second time he managed to keep the bell down while he played and it was really apparent that there was more vibrancy in his sound. Tom didn’t call it this, but in the lesson that I had with Jim Wilt, he talked about the Downward Sit. This is a really powerful concept, and when you can be honest with yourself and realize that it can be beneficial to break the habit of excessive movement while playing, there is much more vibrancy to be found in the sound!

The other teaching moment had to do with centering the sound but from a very different vantage point than the note bending example that he discussed with Allison the horn player. He said, "I want you to play the articulated lines on a third space C, and the slurred lines by moving the first valve and slurring back and forth between the C and the D (one step higher)". This allowed Eddy to really focus on the quality of the note (centering) without hardly any movement. Then Tom said, "Now put your valves halfway down and find the point of greatest resistance, and then play that same rhythmic figure on the third space C pitch". This was harder for Eddy, but he finally got it. And then, Tom had him play the same articulated arpeggio line (still on the static C but with an open horn), and the vibrancy in the sound was much better. Putting it all together with the full excerpt showed definite improvement.

I really liked this technique and will certainly find places to introduce this in my regular practice.

Bravo to Tom for his great troubleshooting and fantastic musical modeling during the masterclass. I know that I found many great learning moments and techniques to add to my regular practice to help me move to the next level. I’m sure all those in attendance had similar "Ah Ha" moments!
_________________
Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest