Musical Context

Mario Guarneri

Portrait in brief

From San Francisco to New York and Los Angeles, a trumpet career unfolds across major orchestras, recordings and teaching, alongside a sustained commitment to access and contemporary music.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

Editorial

When careers pause and certainty fades, real progress begins in private, where discipline, friendship and chamber music reshape what it means to be a musician.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

Editorial

New editorial formats separate current news from long-form content while creating new links between performers, composers, and the evolving brass community.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

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.

By Boyde Hood

Part 2

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.

By Michel Laplace

Part 3

Music in an American Frontier Communal Society

Aurora Colony

Aurora’s bands, chamber groups and restored instruments show how communal faith, German heritage and American public life met in sound, from parlors to parades.

By Deborah M. Olsen

Australian Brass Band Rules Britannia in 1924

By Brendan Collins

Editorial

Between tradition and innovation: brass players must move beyond routine and embrace new musical directions to remain relevant in the music of tomorrow.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

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.

By Lee Underwood

Working with the Posaunenchor

From Württemberg youth groups to mass brass gatherings in Ulm, a community tradition links faith, education and amateur brass playing across generations.

By Max Sommerhalder

The Minahassa Bamboo Brass Bands

Special Holland

By R. Boonzajer

Doc Severinsen

Talent, will and glory

Trumpet virtuoso and nightly television star, Doc Severinsen combined immense popularity with concerts, big bands and iron discipline.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

Dreams and wishes

Things I would like to see happen concerning the horn and horn playing

A set of proposals for the future of the horn: Jeffrey Agrell addresses editions, pedagogy, instruments, and repertoire—from Mozart to contemporary practice.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Part 1

Playing and singing simultaneously on brass instruments

From Weber and Vivier to contemporary solo works, singing into the brass instrument becomes a multiphonic technique shaped by notation, acoustics, and practice.

By Benny Sluchin

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.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

The Polyphonic Trombone

A suggested notation system

When trombone slide, overtones, breath and valves become independent musical voices, conventional notation reaches its limits and a new system becomes necessary.

By Klaus-K. Hübler

Part 2

The trombone in Jazz and Popular Music

The classical Armstrong period (1927-1945)

Jazz trombone changed rapidly between 1927 and 1945, as Armstrong’s influence, big-band playing and new techniques transformed both its language and sound.

By Michel Laplace

Part 3

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.

By Michel Laplace

Jabbo Smith

The Unrecognised Jazz Trumpeter

Overshadowed by Armstrong and later by Eldridge, Jabbo Smith emerges as a crucial trumpet innovator whose speed, range and phrasing anticipated modern jazz.

By Michel Laplace

Part 3

How and why I became a musician

As cinema orchestras vanished and radio reshaped musical life, Edouard Gros learned that survival could mean changing instruments, cities and expectations.

By Edouard Gros

Benny Sluchin

Portrait in brief

Between Paris, Cologne and Tel Aviv, Benny Sluchin brings mathematics, acoustics and contemporary performance into the brass world.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez

I chose to address myself to new music rather than new trumpet

Thomas Stevens argues that progress in trumpet playing depends on better training, repertoire and musical thinking rather than on equipment.

By Thomas Stevens

Brass studies in Australia

As international performers, seminars and teachers reached Australia in the late 1970s, a geographically isolated brass scene began finding its own direction.

By David O'Meara

Conversation by the fireside

A fireside conversation with Philip Jones, Elgar Howarth and Michael Laird—an intimate exchange on brass playing, ensemble culture and musical thinking.

By Jean-Pierre Mathez