Day 5 was a bit of a rest day for me, if you could call doing a coaching, teaching a lesson, and a two-hour Summit Brass rehearsal a rest day. But compared to the previous full days of work, it was nice to have a morning off to take it easy. The career seminar for the day was a class on entrepreneurship with the directors of the RMBI and Denver Brass leaders, Kathy Brantigan and Becky Wilkins, audition seminar creator Denise Tryon, and teacher, soloist, and creator of some really cool musical acts, Joe Burgstaller. While I did not attend, I’m sure there was a ton of great information shared with the participants. Entrepreneurship seminar panel of experts! Al Hood, Paul Naslund, JD Shaw, Tim

Day 4 started with the Career Seminar, “Preparing the Future: Education Careers,” on which I was one of the panel members. Dave Hickman, JD Shaw, Joe Parisi, and Brad Edwards joined me. Dave provided an excellent hand-out for the participants with loads of information on the college teaching career, from the perks of having a university job, down to how to interview, prepare a vitae, etc. I will post the hand out here on my blog soon. We had a fantastic discussion about the education field, and the participants asked several great questions. It was an enlightening morning for me, as I always love to hear from my Summit colleagues about what they do within their studios, and how they got to w

The big event of the day at the RMBI on day 3 was the Mock Audition Competition. The Summit Brass faculty serve as the committees for each respective instrument and the students who wish to, perform a blind audition of a predetermined list of excerpts from the orchestra and wind band repertoire. The trumpet committee of David Hickman, Ron Romm, Joe Burgstaller, Al Hood, and myself heard 14 solid candidates play preliminary rounds. We advanced 3 people into the “final” round, but chose no winner. We did name two honorary mentions. Without going into too much depth as to why we chose no winner (future blog alert), it was simply because of this: nobody really stepped up and performed exceptiona

Events began full-scale today at the RMBI. The opening session was a Career Seminar entitled “Winning ‘The Chair: Orchestra & Military Careers”. The panel of Warren Deck, John Lofton, Brian Bowman, and Allene Hackleman led a lively discussion about not only auditioning, but also how to KEEP the job once the audition is won. This is a subject not taught enough by many in our field and needs to be discussed more. I’ll have a blog about this next week when the RMBI is over. Afterward was the master class sessions of the day, which included my trumpet class. I love this day at the RMBI. I love teaching in the master class setting. I had my usual blast working with a few young trumpeters and shar

This year’s RMBI is bittersweet for the Summit Brass family as, in case you haven’t heard, Dave Hickman is retiring from performing. This means that the Summit Brass concert on Saturday will be Dave’s final concert. The word ‘family’ is an appropriate term to describe how those of us who have played with Summit Brass feel about each other. And now, we are losing our patriarch. Dave will still be the Executive Director and Chair of the Summit Brass board, but to not have him sitting in the trumpet section is unimaginable. Of course, the RMBI staff is making a big deal about Dave’s departure, and has created several nice tributes to him throughout the week. Members, past and present, of the Su

I’m heading off to Denver tomorrow for the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute, in which I am a member of the faculty and Summit Brass. This will be my thirteenth year going to the RMBI, and I still get chills thinking about going and getting to play with my colleagues in Summit! I’ll be sitting down each night to write a daily journal of some of what goes on as the week goes on to chronicle some of the events that happen at the Institute. The RMBI is, IMO, one of the great brass events of the year, and I’d like to keep everyone updated as to what happens. I hope to foster even more interest in the RMBI for the future, as it sure is a blast for all who attend, including those of us in the Summit B

There is no “easy” or “hard”, there is only “familiar” or “unfamiliar.” ~ Victor Goines, Director of Jazz Studies, Northwestern University

Welcome to the re-incarnation of Fat Man Ranting! But I suppose we should now call it Not-So-Fat Man Ranting! FMR was the title of a blog that I used to write in my youth where I would do my therapy ranting about life, music, sports, etc. I’ve decided to ressurect it, however, it will have a more “grown-up” perspective. It will contain what I hope will be some common sense views on the things in life that are important to me; music, trumpet, practicing, family, Brewers baseball, Michigan Football, sports, the internet, politics, and much more. Topics and posts from “Resounding Trumpeter,” a more recent blog of mine focusing on trumpet, will be brought back to life here, as well. The hope is