Sebastian Abbott - trombone

In training

I’m currently in training to play that beast of a trombone solo in Ravel’s Bolero with the Musikfreunde orchestra. It’s not all that long, but it’s very high, and it occurs three times in the piece, plus the even higher bit right at the end. It’s a challenge even for professionals, and pretty daunting for us amateurs.

Our conductor had the decency to ask me if he could add it to this season’s programme, meaning I had time to think and to take up the gauntlet. Since then, I’ve been building up my upper register, practising more frequently than I have in a long time, focussing first on building up my embouchure, and now beginning to get a grip on the music itself.

As Dion Tucker, the jazz trombonist with his YouTube channel, The Chops Shop mentioned in one of his videos, musicians are athletes of the small muscles - and there’s a certain satisfaction in feeling the embouchure muscles firming up and becoming more stable as I continue practising and rehearsing.

→ 10:11 PM, Jun 5

Danzemos! (and the other, upside-down exclamation mark before it): a rhythmical, lyrical semester of music

This has been an interesting semester of music with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchesta. When I first came across the programme, my heart sank a little: we were in for a crowd-pleasing semester of cheesy dancy Latin American stuff with minimal musical merit.

Well, it certainly pleased the crowds - and, I am glad to say, it won me over, too.

We played seven pieces in all, ranging from Ravel's contemplative Pavane pour un enfant défunt (a Pavane being a dance), through to the highlight of the evening, Danzon 2 by Arthuro Marquéz, all kicked off by Gershwin's inimitable Cuban Overture.

As you might guess, there was a lot of rhythm to play, with all the precision and control that that implies. It's very easy to think too much about rhythm, but I certainly had to clarify things in my own mind about how long to play a note, how loudly and with which accents - along, of course, with the basic question of when to play each note.

There was a section in Danzon 2, for example, that required the trombones to play syncopated stabs against the trumpet melody. A 4/4 bar was followed by 6/8, then 7/8 and then we had to come in on the first quaver offbeat of the next 4/4 bar. Whilst we certainly needed to figure out what we should be playing (and when), it soon became a question of feeling the rhythm, not counting it - and certainly not thinking about it.

All the while, confidence grew and I worked on improving my openness of sound as the necessary base.

The trombone writing in this programme was all about presence and poise. As I mentioned above, it was about precision accompanied by the ability to give each note, no matter how short, its best. For me, this was another semester of rediscovery of coolness whilst playing. I am slowly learning to relax whilst playing - especially in the throat, which I have always tended to tense up, thereby constricting the flow of air, and wasting energy. The concert was certainly energetic, but I feel I succeeded in playing with a rounder tone than before, and with a more relaxed concentration than I would have achieved in the past.

We had some personnel difficulties within the section, with the second trombone not really fitting in. He's a young guy and could very well learn the lessons that I've been learning myself - but he didn't manage to give the impression that he was aware of any lessons needing to be learned at all. In addition, he missed both rehearsal weekends, without giving any notice to us at all. That was the final straw. Our conductor and I took the decision to ask him not to play - and, despite my own need to try and avoid conflict, our relief at the decision having been taken was palpable.

Once that was cleared up, it was a case of hiring a pro to get us through the concerts - and what a pleasure it was, having him and the student tubist on board (our own tame tubist having had to skip this semester). We organised a sectional rehearsal on the Saturday before our set of concerts, and it was a revelation. Suddenly, we were all in tune, suddenly I felt that the musical messages that the conductor had spent the semester of rehearsals trying to get across, got across - albeit through my imperfect translations. Suddenly, we were a low brass section. Suddenly, it felt great to play in an orchestra again.

As always with the Musikfreunde, the orchestra got tighter and more lyrical over the course of the three concerts. The first was - as usual - a blast, as we hacked our way through most of the repertoire at a school concert, where we had to finish on time so that everybody could get home in time to watch the Germany - Brazil semi-final at the world cup.

The concert in Neustadt an der Weinstraße was better - less raucous, more controlled, but still somewhat overexcited. Finally, the Stadthalle concert went better than I had hoped for. My Mum, who also came along, noted the ultimate praise: nobody around her in the audience could keep still.

We had them dancing, and that's what it was all about.

→ 9:08 PM, Jul 22

Musikfreunde: Russian Romantics without a hint of snow

Another semester of orchestral music has drawn to a close with Saturday night's concert of the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra in the Stadthalle. The hall was packed, we played with passion and precision (though not always both at the same time), and the audience was by all accounts happy.

It was an unexpectedly relaxed end to an otherwise hectic term - for me, at least. It was presumably much less relaxing for our principal conductor, who was ill over the last few weeks leading up to the main concert and is still reuperating. He had to limit himself to the concerts (in Gernsbach and Leutershausen as well as the Stadhalle itself), so a couple of final rehearsals were cancelled. With those "pre-concerts" being two weeks before the main one, the final weeks were much less packed than usual. Given that the final result was so good, perhaps the timing was just right to "depressurise" things, keeping us keen and fresh rather than jaded and exhausted.

The pressure built up before term had even started. We had struggled to find trombonists to fill one position, and the term had started badly with various of us not being able to attend rehearsals regularly. I, for example, had taken all the music home with me one week, but didn't attend the following week's rehearsal, when other players turned up. It was all a bit frustrating, especially when our conductor sent a few ratty emails to us, and to me in particular as de facto lead trombonist.

I had skipped last summer's concerts to move house, which turned out to be a welcome break from the hustle and bustle in the build up to the main concerts. With the rather stressful start to this term, I did wonder why I was putting myself through all this.

As term went on and the programme began taking shape, we uncovered some difficulties with integrating the new trombonist, a young student who tended to get overexcited and to pull us out of shape, both in terms of rhythm and tuning. We had to have a few chats - in one sense to remind him that it was he who needed to adapt to us rather than the other way around. I hadn't expected to have to use some middle-management techniques in an orchestral situation, and I was a little nervous prior to asking him aside for a portion of contructive criticism - but he took the event calmly and seemed to understand that he needed to develop. He still has a lot to learn in terms of breathing and body control: sitting next to a someone trying both to play and to nod to the beat was rather distracting, especially as the length of the trombone tends to amplify movement - but all of that can come with time.

The music itself was a very appealing mix of humour, drama, pathos and grandeur. As a result of some difficulties in ordering music from Russia (we had planned to play Khatchaturian's Triumphal Poem, but the publisher failed to collect a full orchestra's worth of notes, it had been so seldom played), we resorted to one piece that I had played with the Musikfreunde a few years previously, Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead, which I have grown to love as a piece. Its depth and the sheer skill in its composition completely knocked any anti-romantic snobbery in me.

I had never come across Glasunov before, and his 2nd Symphony was an enjoyable blast. It felt almost simple at first, but that simplicity hid a playful inventiveness that made this work much more than (for me) an unknown oddity played more for its rarity than any intrinsic value - no, it paid its way musically, too!

So, this term was one to remember as a learning as well as a musical experience. The weather was rather less memorable - Russian Romantics in the rain.

The weather in Heidelberg around concert time

→ 5:43 AM, Feb 17

The Musikfreunde and me: Ravel, Grieg and co keep us together

It’s the end of another series of concerts with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra; one I was very close to skipping entirely. At the end of the previous concert, I’d had enough of orchestra for a while, and overall I was feeling uncomfortably stretched. Orchestra had become another stress raiser rather than reliever and I needed to give myself some breathing space for other things in life (like composing, biking and “just” family, for example). In the end (of the beginning of term), a lack of alternative trombonists meant that I stuck with MFH for this programme, too.

Through house searches, potential job offers, overloaded drudgery at work and general family life, I managed to attend most rehearsals - and the three concerts this semester made it all worthwhile.

We played in the Neubausaal in Schwäbisch Hall, then at a school concert in the Gymnasium in Neckargemünd and finally in our standard main venue, the Stadthalle in Heidelberg. There was something about the programme, especially the Ravel and the Grieg that reminded me of the joy to be found in music.

The Grieg in particular is too easy to dismiss as one of the standards these days (and, judging by the audience in the Stadthalle on Saturday evening, it can still pull the crowds). However, it’s still simply wonderful music to be part of and, at the hands of a decent pianist, as we had in Randolf Stöck, it has everything: lyricism and a positive dynamism that are hard to match. Ravel’s La Valse is witty and very difficult to pull off for an amateur orchestra - I think we did a decent job of it.

It was also rewarding for me personally to get to a relatively decent playing quality again. I didn’t feel too outgunned by the hired hand, a trombone student from the Mannheim Musikhochschule, who helped out on bass. As always, the psychology of performing is tricky to master: everybody’s pumped up and tends to play on the edge in terms of volume, losing control in the process. I certainly fall into that trap, but I am at least becoming more aware of it. As always, though, “negative” corrections are difficult: if only one person plays more quietly, he’ll still be swamped by the mass, whereas if one plays more loudly, he’ll stand out and can pull the orchestra along with him. It’s something our principal conductor, René Schuh tries to remind us of each time - we still forget.

So, we’ll see if I end up taking a break for the winter semester instead (it’s more conducive to evenings in, anyway). There’s plenty of time to decide upon that, however, with rehearsals starting again in October. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get some duet or trio playing in, to keep the trombone chops in half-way respectable working order…

→ 12:41 PM, Jul 16

Learning to love Dvorak in Heidelberg

I play trombone with the Musikfreunde Symphony orchestra in Heidelberg. We rehearse and perform along the university semester cycle, which leads to some intense periods of music; a welcome insight into the world of the musician, without having to be one.

This semester we have been working on Dvorak's 9th Symphony, "From the New World", alongside Mussorgsky's "Night on Bare Mountain" and Bruch's Violin Concerto (no use putting any numbers there; he doesn't seem to have written anything else worth performing). We recently had a rehearsal weekend, immersing ourselves in music, and our first two concerts, successfully dispatched in Langenselbold (no, I had no idea, either) and Freiburg. Tomorrow night is our final, crowning concert in the Heidelberg Stadthalle.

I want to write a little bit about the Dvorak. For me, it's easy to dismiss - it's popular, for a start, which always makes me suspicious - and even as I tried to disregard its popularity, the piece never seemed to have anything of interest to say to me. It has its famous tunes and that's it; a pretty face with not much behind it. However, sitting at the back of the orchestra alongside the other trombonists and the poor tuba (who only has 14 notes to play in the whole piece), I have been learning to appreciate the piece, certainly to admire it, possibly, at times, conditionally, to love it.

That word 'learning' implies a process and indeed it took a while for me to feel at all involved in the piece during rehearsals, even though there's enough for the trombones to play (except in the third movement, where the trombones are inexplicably tacet - perhaps Anton didn't trust us to be sufficiently fleet of foot; or perhaps he simply didn't trust us to successfully find all of those repeats).

How could I not be involved in a piece that I am playing? It's a good question and the answer has two components - the physical / technical aspect of playing, and the emotional.

Physically, of course I was involved. There are several themes that the trombones play and - more difficult - lots of stabs to hit successfully. I was working on my technique, getting the breathing right, tweaking the tuning, trying to listen in to my colleagues to make sure we were playing as a section. Oh - and of course trying to play the right notes most of the time.

Through all of this, I didn't really have time to experience the piece. It had some tunes and some trombones.

Emotionally, we didn't connect for a long time, the piece and I. Maybe it was the overall lack of dissonance in the overall outlook, the almost saccharine positivity in the piece that discouraged me from investigating further. I certainly identified more strongly with the Kabalewsky and the Roussel that we played in previous winter concerts. Whilst the Dvorak certainly contains many little clashing details embedded throughout the piece to give it that certain frisson every piece of music needs, the overall impression was of musical platitudes that have become somewhat cliched.

Historically, Dvorak wrote the piece during a three year long sojourn in America (1892-1895), where he encountered and revelled in its musical and natural diversity. He was inspired to write a classical symphony that whilst not specifically including American elements, certainly painted a picture of a voyage, wide open plains, dance and returns to source. There is a human element in there that is American-tinged, leading to the critics' and theorists discussions about the nature of the songs - American or slavic.

Dvorak himself denied the presence of any American idiom in the piece, but I feel it does bubble forth with a visitor's joie de vivre. The perennial problem with incorporating traditional songs of whichever background is that those songs were meant to be sung, those rhythms danced to, not stuffed into a symphonic wad of cotton.

The significance of Dvorak's sojourn in New York stems from his assertion that the Americans should really develop their own classical language. The Americans we're hungry for confirmation of their place in the world, Europeans were thirsty for impressions of this New World, so its success was guaranteed and justified.

So - after that slight interlude, how did I begin to appreciate the piece? The interesting devil is in the details. Burrow underneath the tunes and you will find so much activity going on behind the scenes. The scherzo third movement in particular has so much going on. There are rhythms that rejoice in syncopation, there are for me unfathomable chords (the shimmering echoes between strings and woodwind are wonderful), there is a spark of excitement that is not lost in the repeats. It was in not playing that I could 'shut up and listen'.

As with people, so with music; give yourself some time to get beyond the superficial and you will find much to admire. Such listening is hard work, and requires practice. I currently do not listen to nearly enough classical music, mostly, I suspect, because I do not train myself to do so, nor grant myself the time to do so. Time to try again, I think!

So - do I really love the Dvorak? Actually, no. But I can admire it and that's a step foreward.

ps, boredom in music is of course not an uncommon problem, but the reasons behind what makes a piece dull are still remarkably difficult to describe.

→ 1:00 PM, Jul 8

I wish...(trombone version)

I wish...

somebody had taught me how to breath much earlier; how important the body is to playing; that the lips are the gateway to the trombone, but that the work is done much earlier; how important the mind is to playing; how important relaxation is to playing; that the instrument should be brought up to my posture, not the other way around.

These things I now realise and know intellectually, but they are not innate.

Does it matter? Well, I am where I am with orchestra, and I don't necessarily need to be at a higher level... But I do dream of it sometimes. We can all dream.

→ 3:21 PM, Jun 2