Probably the first and most essential part of any path to good results on the trumpet is having a good idea of how you want to sound. The trumpet can make all kinds of different noises*, but only a handful of them are likely to carry us forward towards our musical goals. In our culture, it’s hard not to hear examples of good trumpet playing (the Starwars soundtrack springs to mind), so most people don’t come to trumpet playing with a true absence of preconceived notions about how to sound, but there’s a big difference between passively hearing music around you and actively listening to a great model and trying to emulate it.
This process of listening to a great performer, being inspired by them, and trying to copy what you’ve heard is at the heart of how we learn to play the trumpet, so I’d like to start this series of exploration of internet trumpet resources with one of my personal sound models – Wynton Marsalis.
Properly discussing Wynton’s many, many accomplishments would take considerable time, but for our purposes it’s probably sufficient to say that he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest trumpet soloists in history. For one thing, he’s almost certainly the only musician on any instrument to have been among the best in both jazz and classical musical idioms at the same time. When people talk about the very uppermost echelons of musicians, it’s hard to make representative evaluations and comparisons between them, because, ultimately each player specializes in their own distinctive areas, but it’s safe to say that Wynton’s technical skills on the trumpet are as good as anyone else alive today. There are other players who are more famous for their speed, or their high range, or perhaps their sophisticated style, but for my money, there’s no other player who does all of these things as consistently well as he does. (To say nothing of his skills as an improviser and composer.)
Wynton has recorded a huge swathe of the classical trumpet repertoire, and there are many great performances to choose from, but one that I would suggest as a great starting point is his recording of Henri Tomasi’s Concerto for Trumpet. The Tomasi Concerto is one of the most difficult pieces in the standard trumpet repertoire, but you’d never know that from Wynton’s performance, as all of the wide contrasts in range, dynamic, speed, and tone are executed with aplomb in this performance. When performing difficult music (which this certainly is!), one of the key responsibilities of a performer is to make the music speak naturally, and not show the strain of its difficulty to the audience, and I think you’ll agree that Wynton gives a very successful and convincing performance of this piece. Happy listening!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbLfaJK2mys
* No kidding – if you’ve ever had the experience of hearing the sounds that come from a whole room full of beginner trumpet players, guaranteed, in less than five minutes you’ll have heard a wild and wonderful variety of sounds made, very few of which would be ones most people would want to hear in a musical context.
Steven Abra - Toronto Trumpet Player and Teacher 