Jazz

Underwood, Lee

Glenn Ferris - Profile

Beyond fame and labels: Glenn Ferris rejects the music business game—defining a raw, uncompromising vision of creativity, freedom, and what it means to truly play.

Johnson, Tommy

A guide to commercial tuba playing in the Los Angeles area

Hollywood reality check: Tommy Johnson reveals what it really takes to become a commercial tuba player in Los Angeles—skill, versatility… and patience.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

The horn was once considered incompatible with jazz until changing ideas of sound and musicians like John Graas quietly overturned that certainty.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Julius Watkins

A pioneering career, landmark recordings and collaborations with jazz legends gave the French horn a place it had never occupied before.

Hood, Boyde

10 Outstanding Trumpet Players in the Los Angeles Area

Behind the polished sound of Los Angeles studio trumpet playing stood remarkably similar training, disciplined routines, and a craft shaped by constant stylistic demands.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

Before Louis Armstrong became the defining figure, jazz already carried competing traditions of tone, style and technique shaped by cornet players across New Orleans and beyond.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Getting started

For the classically trained horn player, jazz replaces the security of the printed page with listening, swing and improvisation—and a different kind of discipline.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The “Classical” Period 1927-1945 — The Golden Age of the Trumpet

Between Armstrong’s rise and bebop’s arrival, the trumpet became jazz’s dominant voice, reshaping technique, orchestras, sound, mutes and virtuosity.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The pluralism of the so-called “modern” forms (1945 to the present)

Bebop, Miles Davis and the rise of the flugelhorn mark a postwar jazz landscape in which trumpet playing splintered into competing sounds and ideals.

Laplace, Michel

Harry James (1916-1983)

Young Man With A Horn

Harry James stood between jazz virtuosity and popular showmanship, turning the trumpet into a mass-audience voice without losing the respect of classical players.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Thomas Bacon

Classical discipline meets jazz-rock freedom as Thomas Bacon confronts improvisation, stylistic crossover and the physical demands placed on the horn.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The instrument for jazz

Jazz trumpet playing balances equipment, embouchure and articulation, as changing sound ideals reshape mouthpieces, technique and the physical approach to playing.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and in Popular Music

Breathing

Breathing, Valsalva, mouthpiece position and daily practice collide with received wisdom as trumpet technique is reconsidered from the body outward.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Wynton Marsalis

Interview

At 26, Wynton Marsalis confronts jazz education, popular culture and artistic integrity with convictions as uncompromising as his approach to the trumpet.

Watt, Robert L.

Miles Davis

Meeting with collard and mustard greens

A bag of greens opens an unusually intimate view of Miles Davis: cooking, horses, boxing, race and music collide far from the mythology of the stage.