I began my video describing my Overall Approach to dealing with performance anxiety by playing two excerpts from Götterdämmerung on the bass trumpet with two different setups. Here are the details about what instrument and mouthpieces I used.

I played both excerpts on my orchestra’s bass trumpet, which is an E-Flat/D instrument made by Thein (pictured below). A few years back, my orchestra had some money earmarked for instrument purchase that needed to be used before the end of the year. A set of wooden flutes the orchestra had ordered turned out to be much less expensive than initially budgeted, and so the situation came up where some funds needed to be used in a very short amount of time to buy an instrument. I was pretty lucky, because an E-flat bass trumpet had just been returned to Thein Brass. The story as I remember it was that a German opera company had previously purchased it, but after a year sent it back to Thein, because the chief conductor of the opera orchestra preferred a C bass trumpet instead. This seemed like a great chance for me to make a deal on a quality instrument.

I went down to Bremen and tried out the bass trumpet. I really liked how it played. I requested a D valve be added, because some passages in the Ring — which is primarily what I use the instrument for — have dreadful fingerings in E-flat that are no problem in D. Being primarily a trombone player, I appreciate anything that will make using valves a bit easier! I also asked Thein to build a slide mechanism that could adjust the pitch either up or down as necessary. Again, being a trombone player, I really prefer to adjust pitch with the instrument and not lip things up or down. I am so incredibly happy with the end result! The instrument plays like a dream.

The bass trumpet came with a Thein D1A alto trombone mouthpiece. (This size bass trumpet is basically a valve alto trombone with a more conical bore, so it makes sense to use an alto trombone mouthpiece.) I find that the D1A makes a very round, warm sound, and it is especially comfortable to use in the soft dynamics and low range. I used this mouthpiece for the first, more lyrical excerpt in the video. I also used the D1A for Brahms 1 on my alto last week in the orchestra, and it worked really well for me.

For the second excerpt, I used Toby Oft’s Griego alto trombone mouthpiece (regular model, not Omega Lambda) . The Oft alto mouthpiece has amazing clarity, and so when I need to project or cut through — especially in the high range — I use this mouthpiece. I‘ve used the Oft mouthpiece with my alto trombone for the Beethoven Symphonies as well as Mozart’s Requiem.

I got very used to switching between the two for Götterdämmerung, and I am planning on seeing if I can apply that to other works that come up on alto. The rims are close enough in size that it was not a problem for me to switch between them, choosing the mouthpiece best suited to my role in the orchestra for a particular passage. I did try to keep the switching down to a minimum (for ex., trying to keep the same mouthpiece for at least a page or two).

Since we’re talking alto mouthpieces, I will mention that I also have a Griego 11, New York blank. This is the holy grail, as far as I am concerned, for Rhenish. I swear the top E-flat is the best note on that mouthpiece. It feels to me like it wants you to rise up to that tone. Definitely a confidence builder for the Schumann! You “only” have to play the previous ten notes nicely and then a beautiful high E-flat awaits you. Easier said than done, right?

There are some passages in the orchestral repertoire that are universally considered difficult: the Brahms 1st Symphony chorale, the solos from Bolero or Mahler 3, etc. But then, for whatever reason, there are also those passages that hit individual players on their personal weaknesses. Maybe one player might find them challenging, but another might not think they’re a big deal.

For me, the ending of Scheherazade has been one of those kinds of passages. It’s those first three descending loud notes — A, G-sharp, G — after the loud trombone section bit. To play those with clarity and good sound, and to project over the orchestra in coordination with the horns, has been something that has been extremely challenging to me over the years.

This past January, we played Scheherazade, and I finally got the result I’ve always wanted in this spot. It’s kind of funny, because, in the context of the entire piece, it is overshadowed by many other places, including difficult multiple tonguing and other rhythmic bits. So it’s not like anyone listening to the performance would know that it’s those few notes that were most meaningful to me.

In that way, this was a very personal accomplishment. (You can hear me play this passage at about 00.40 into the recording below.)

The boring answer as to how I have improved my ability to perform this passage is patience, trial and error, and slowly gathering pieces of information from people I greatly admire, gradually incorporating them into my playing over a long period of time.

Specific to trombone technique, I’ve come to prioritize what you might call immediate sound. Any kind of hesitation will leave you with a lack of flow of air and an embouchure that prevents the volume and color you need in a passage like this one in Scheherazade. If you’re an Alessi Music Studios subscriber — and I highly recommend you become one if you’re not already — you’ll know Joe Alessi is big on this concept. He’s the source of this particular bit of information.

We’ve had Ian Bousfield in town as a soloist, conductor and/or coach several times since I’ve been with the orchestra, and each time he has come, I‘ve tried to soak up as much of his way of playing as I possibly can. Then, afterwards, I’ve tried to figure out in my own words and concepts what it is that makes his playing so effective. With regard to this Scheherazade passage, it is employing Ian’s focus and efficiency in the high range. To me, it’s like Ian skims the cream off the top of the sound in passages like this, only using that brilliant, projecting part of the sound that can leap out of the bell and into the audience.

The more exciting answer to what I’ve changed is: my mouthpiece and setup, haha. Over the years, I’ve gravitated towards a setup that adds more upper overtones to my sound. I’ve done some tests with an audio spectrum analyzer, and have been led by those results, as well as some conversations with Christian Griego, to choose a lighter-gauge bell, standard slide (no more nickel bass crook), and a mouthpiece that is a bit wider but more shallow. This last concept about mouthpieces is one that Ian encourages too, and I’m using his V3 mouthpiece in the recording, as a matter of fact.

Me trying to improve in my performance of this passage in Scheherazade is a pretty good example of the peculiarity of my life as an orchestral musician. We’re talking about three notes that come twice in a single piece of music, notes that honestly very few people in the audience would even really notice how I play them, in a work that comes around only once every four or five years or so. However, the reality of the existence of these few tones, and the fact that I will surely have to attempt them again, has remained somewhere in the back of my mind. Each time I’ve heard anything that might be relevant to making them sound better has tripped a switch somewhere in my brain that says “perhaps I can use this for those notes in Scheherazade.” Music is famously subjective and there’s always room for improvement, so I won’t be ending my quest here: those switches will continue to trip when something helpful makes itself known to me. However, I can say that I have turned a corner and that the result I got in this passage in January was a personal accomplishment.

This past January, we played a film music concert, directed by Robert Ziegler, that featured primarily music from superhero films. This was a real career highlight for me! I say that in part because recording soundtracks is one of the things I miss the most from my years freelancing in Seattle, and it was a thrill to get to get back to performing this kind of music. Moreover, as I’ll detail in a moment, there was a personal family connection to some of the music on the program that made it particularly meaningful.

I have to begin by giving credit to my low brass group, which consisted of me, Anna Hjerrild Weitling, Joshua Blows, Samuel Taber, and Pernilla Brown. It was a true pleasure performing with these guys!

The set list consisted mostly of Marvel movies, but I thought I’d share audio clips from two different DC soundtracks, both from Batman movies. (These clips are live from the Alsion performance.) To start, here’s some music from Hans Zimmer’s Dark Knight Rises. One of the reasons I know I am meant to be an orchestral trombone player is that I find unique enjoyment and satisfaction in rehearsing and performing simple block chords with a low brass section. Although I am a sucker for loud octave melodies in a minor key over taiko drums as much as anyone, I find that, looking back on a performance like this, it’s the fine details of the kind of quiet section moments you can hear in the first minute and a half of this clip, that I end up regarding most fondly. I find it super rewarding to be a part of an ensemble-before-self mindset and a team effort. It’s why I’ve often favored ensemble playing over solo playing.

Next up we have Danny Elfman’s score to the 1989 Tim Burton classic Batman. This was the Batman movie of my youth. I remember seeing that film in the theater, and then sprinting home on my bicycle, inspired by all the themes I had just heard. There was a record store a few blocks from my house, and I found a cassette tape there of Elfman’s original soundtrack. I wore that tape out, going as far as dictating a lot of my favorite sections and writing a little arrangement for piano. My father was kind enough to sit down at the piano with me and play through it, giving me some ideas and encouragement for what I had written. We lost Dad last year, and this memory is one that I really cherish.

I’ll include two sections from the rather lengthy Batman suite we played in January, the first one being a delicate soft bit. One of the. . . challenges, let’s say. . . of playing first trombone is that you occasionally get something high and soft placed awkwardly in a program. So, although I am a big fan of Elfman’s Batman score, I was not really thrilled to see this lick in my part, which I would be asked to execute after a good hour of a mostly loud and aggressive progam:

Since it’s the focus of this website, I would like to describe my mental process in playing this little line, or at least what I was thinking about at the time. As I mentioned, I love the soundtrack, and it goes back to my years growing up in Kentucky. This source material is a pretty deep well to dip into emotionally. So, although the performance made me nervous, I was able to recognize the anxiety as being in striated, and then let myself feel the underlying passion for what I was playing. That sort of inoculated me against any unwanted or misplaced tension. (I come in at about 46 seconds in the clip.)

I thought that the ending of the Elfman Batman Suite was so satisfying to play that I would post it here. It also provides a chance for me to give a shout out to my brass colleagues in the orchestra, as well as the several very fine extra musicians included in the production. I am so proud of having been a part of that group!

This concert was a whole family affair, with my kids, big superhero fans themselves, in attendance. My youngest, Ingvar, came to the concert in Captain America cosplay, and Pernilla and I gave the orchestra permission to use his photo in their press materials. (He looks so serious b/c, like I said, he was in cosplay, answering only to Cap or Steve Rogers that evening.) Having my family there made the concert particularly special, and created a link between me as a boy, bicycling home, thrilled by Elfman’s score, my father, playing through my version for piano, and my kids, finding inspiration in this very same music. Our orchestra really did a great job producing the show, with lights and images, as well as bringing in Danish YouTuber Jørgen Bjørn as emcee. It was defintely one of my favorite weeks I’ve had at work.

I have moved all my ISTDP content over to its own part of this website:

www.philbrownmusic.dk/istdp

I also organized it into a reading order that, I think, will make better sense of what I’m getting at with my work on ISTDP and performing. By arranging the various posts and videos into a sequence, I hope it will give the content flow. The table of contents at the top of the page also makes it easier to find a particular topic you might be interested in reading/watching.

I have so far used what I lovingly call the “Bob’s Burgers” approach to my website and YouTube channel. I have focused on creating content that is up to my desired standard of quality, but I have hardly done anything in the way of promotion. . . yet!

I will soon begin to reach out to more contacts to see if I can’t attract more attention to my materials on this website, and on YouTube. I really believe in this work of applying ISTDP to performing music. It is ground-breaking and has the potential, I think, to make a big difference in people’s lives.

I will continue to create and add more ISTDP performing content, but it will be posted directly on the ISTDP part of this website.

Every time I play “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, two thoughts always cross my mind:

1. This is some of the most moving and magnificent music ever composed.

2. 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?

Here’s a short little video I made about using yoga breathing to slow your pulse. Rapid heartrate is one of the most common symptoms of anxiety.

This is not ISTDP, per se. However, before using this exercise it is helpful to first recognize that you have striated anxiety causing your heart to beat faster.

While rapid pulse may not necessarily have a direct effect on the way you play, it can give you an unpleasant physical sensation. The simple yoga breathing technique of four in, hold for seven, and eight out can effectively lower your pulse and make you feel more comfortable.

View fullsize

View fullsize

I spent the better part of the fall on a very exciting project: arranging four different songs to be performed at my orchestra’s Christmas Gala concerts. The songs, conducted by Gareth Hudson, featured Johanne Milland as soloist, along with The Esbjerg Conservatory Girls’ Choir. It was a substantial and challenging project, but I was absolutely thrilled with the end result.

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!

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

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!

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

***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.)

I first started meditating soon after Ray Premru handed me a copy of “Inner Game of Tennis” in 1993. That was 28 years ago, and I have been meditating regularly since then. I have gone through stretches when I’ve really been into it, and found it to be super helpful staying calm and focused on stage. Other times, I have felt like it made my trombone playing boring, and laid off it a bit. I was completely unable to distinguish why it had sometimes worked and other times not.

The insights of ISTDP led me to look into the different ways people meditate and see if I couldn’t solve the dilemma of how to meditate in a way that would add peace and calm to my performances, but that wouldn’t make my music making bland and uninteresting. I think I’ve found an answer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with technique. I continue to meditate just like I always have, simply sitting in a quiet place, either on a cushion or in a chair, and counting my natural breaths, one through ten, over and over again, for about ten minutes each day. 

The difference I’ve discovered is in the intention of the meditation. With the kind of meditation I do, it is possible to either become more connected with your inner life or detach from it. Niether way is right or wrong, per se; however, detaching is a psychological defense. It has the effect of distancing you from feeling. That makes for boring performances, not to mention a life cut off from the richness and complexity of who you really are. 

Meditating to connect with yourself reveals to you how you are doing at that moment. What you are feeling. What is distracting you. What defenses you might be using. What emotions are presenting themselves, requesting to be acknowledged. That is incredibly useful information that helps you navigate your performances as well as your life itself!

A few years ago, my orchestra performed Verdi’s Requiem at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, Germany. That was a very cool experience! The morning of the concert, I visited the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. There happened to be an exhibit on Buddhist art, and I stumbled upon an inscription on a statue depicting Taoist meditation that took my breath away:

“Self-realization through the transference of the primal energy of life into human existence.”

This is precisely the goal the kind of meditation I am now practicing and also a rather poetic description of the the purpose of ISTDP.

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!

Here’s a little useful tip: try using a double-edged safety razor (pictured right) instead of a multiple-blade refillable (pictured left) when shaving around the embouchure area. With the old-fashioned safety razor, you’ll get much fewer annoying ingrown hairs, because it cuts hairs off right at the skin level. The newer multiple-blade razors lift and cut the hairs below skin level, which, along with your mouthpiece, can encourage hairs to become ingrown.

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!