In college I joined the startup of a trombone choir. I didn't come up with the idea, but I became very involved with the group when I started writing trombone choir music. The three major pieces I wrote were called Fantasia à 12, Entrance, Passage, and Fugue and The Mayan Ballcourt: Partita for Six Trombones.
By the time I'd graduated, I'd written a small library of music, including arrangements by Bach. Our ensemble also played a number of favorites by Haydn, Bach, and Lassus Trombone, not to mention the Admiral's Hymn.
Writing or arranging in 4, 6, or 12 parts for an instrument with the same range is a challenge. The Mayan Ballcourt was my senior thesis, a six-movement piece based on what I'd learned in anthropology classes about the ballcourt game the Mayan culture played during the height of their civilization. It was somewhat personal to me, having visited Chichén-Itzá in the mid-1980s. The opening movement was a kind of experimental piece for me, which I could not figure out how to notate in Finale, my app of choice at the time, so it was written-out by pen. It was a portayal of the Mayan practice of burning soaked reeds. Itz was a life force, whether it was maize gruel, blood, or semen. The piece was specifically designed for a specific acoustical space, the Wilson Commons at the University of Rochester, a space designed by I.M. Pei. The concert performance was given when students and university folk were able to use the space so their "noise" is part of the ambiance. The pyramid of 4ths is explored in this movement along with wide-vibrato.
Entrance, Passage and Fugue had two versions, one for wind ensemble, debuted by the University of Rochester Wind Ensemble, and the original version for the Stingers Trombone Choir, debuted at the Eastman School of Music. The fugue theme is stolen from Bach's Musical Offering.
My arrangement of the "trio sonata" texture of Bach's B-minor prelude, BWV 869, is my favorite thing played by the group, where I put down my baton and played first trombone, which typically wasn't my role. I have a recording with two colleauges (it was a trio and as such, gave the other 10 players a rest). My good friends Orlando and Bob accompanied me; Orlando, as usual, on bass, and Bob on the middle part.
Our interpretation was based in part on the piano rendition by Frederich Gulda, where the bass is separated and punchy; the upper parts have independence. In the recording my vibrato is evident, a quality that one of my teachers tried to get my to cultivate. Unlike a violin, whose vibrato is controlled by an oscillation in the left hand, a wind instrument's vibrato is usually controlled by the amount of breath going through the instrument, or in the case of a trombone, by the movement of the slide. My vibrato was only breath vibrato.
Tonight I came across a You Tube video of a live trombone choir concert and all my memories of being in a trombone choir, writing for one, conducting one; it all came back. They were playing the same Haydn piece we'd played. The next movement was unknown, but damn, if it didn't sound like the beginning of my Mayan Ballcourt piece.
I can't be more thankful for the opportunity to win the trust of fellow students in college who played my music and my arrangements. I learned more in that ensemble than most of what I learned in my classes. I, today, stand ashamed that I didn't push myself to write more music for trombone.
It's all the more troubling knowing that my friend Bob has passed. If I'd asked him what I should do I know already what he'd say and that enough is rationale to change my course of action in life.
I got started blogging in the late 1990s—1997 to be exact—after I found myself not quite sure what was next for me. For reasons I won't share here, I hadn't been focused as I should have been for what happens after college. I know I wasn't the only one! During the spring of my senior year I started learning HTML and left to my own devices, I had a website in a few months, and was seeing what others online were doing—all my age and with my own level of experience. They were sharing aspects of their lives. On the internet you could have an audience.
My trombone playing friend Bob encouraged me to publish my stories online. I wasn't even aware that I had "stories," but he told me, "it's the ones you tell us, Admiral!"
Yes, the reason he called me 'Admiral' is a story onto itself.
But he thought I had a voice. And that others should experience that voice. It took some time before biberfan became only a website about music. I put the idea of writing stories aside. I wanted to write music. And music reviews.
But the thing that even made me try? That someone like him thought I should. I've known for sometime that I am held back by my own lack of esteem for my efforts. When someone writes me out of the blue to tell me they liked a review? Know that I immediately get the urge to write ten more. Having that support in life is so critically important to some of us.
So even I have let myself down in not writing more music for trombones, I have found the courage of late to write. The urge hit in 2015 on a vacation. I pulled out my laptop and started to write.
The shipment of books came in this week and they're sitting in my hallway. It's a personal triumph. I am hoping he'd want a copy.