Inspired Performance, Dedicated Instruction
Well, friends, colleagues, and students,
School has started and I’m looking at a packed schedule on top of my already busy teaching and performing schedule! SO Monday recaps are going on a little vacation. Please don’t cry. I’ll still be posting here from time to time and I always keep my gig calendar updated.
Sincerely,
Lauren
Friends, family, students and student families, fans, random internet lurkers,
I am pleased to announce that on Friday July 15th I made my second annual campaign to fund scholarship to my studio for low-income low brass students live on GoFundMe. The campaign is running strong at nearly $1000 after only 4 days- which is where I set my goal for Friday, July 22nd! This year, I’m hoping to double contributions so I can expand the program to 2 full or 4 half scholarships, and offer clinics to school band programs that can’t otherwise afford outside coaching.
Here’s the link: Husting Studio Scholarship 2016
Please consider visiting for more information, donating if you can, and sharing the link with your circle! I really appreciate all the help and support this little project has gotten this past year, and I can’t wait to see where it grows.
Students and Student Families! Summer is nearly here, and it’s time to consider your schedule for summer lessons in my studio. Remember that musical learning is something that can carry on all year- and will better prepare you for a successful fall in your band program. Over the summer we can look at new music that interests you, prepare auditions for college or high school wind ensemble, look at new techniques and styles, and just generally have fun making music on our instruments!
My studio schedule is posted here, as always.
Additionally, I have a few extra opportunities for summer study through West Bank School of Music:
Beginner Brass Camp
Is your child starting a brass instrument at school in the fall and want a head start? Get them ready for fall band through sessions that will introduce them to their instruments, show them how to make a good sound and read music, foster proper technique, and get them going with playing songs!
Prerequisites: Elementary
Age requirements: None
Instruments: Elementary trumpet, horn, trombone, baritone/euphonium, and tuba
Dates: Trumpets/Horns: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8/9 – 8/25, 3:15pm – 4:00pm; Low Brass: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8/9 – 8/25, 4:15pm – 5:00pm
Sessions: 6 sessions, 2x/week
Balanced Brass Performance
Learn a natural approach to playing a brass instrument through healthy, holistic methods. Session 1 – “Sound”: How air makes all the difference. Session 2 – “Music”: Brass playing is as easy as singing. Session 3 – “Focus”: Practice techniques that create solid foundations for learning.
Prerequisites: Intermediate to Advanced
Age requirements: None
Instruments: Intermediate to Advanced trumpet, horn, trombone, baritone/euphonium, and tuba
Dates: Saturdays, 7/30 – 8/13, 10:30am – 12:00pm
Sessions: 3 sessions
Girls Rock!
Get ready to rock this summer in an all-girls environment! Come with your own axe or learn the rock band instrument you’ve always wanted to play. Our band will learn to cover and rehearse songs, write our own originals, create stage presence, and talk about the music business and what it means to be a rockstar. We’ll finish the session with a real life gig!
Prerequisites: No experience necessary
Age requirements: 6th – 12th grade
Instruments: Vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards
Dates: M – F, 6/20-6/24 and 8/29 – 9/2, 4:00pm – 6:30pm
Sessions: 1 week + performance TBD
In celebration of tonight’s premiere Swing Sisterhood concert, the final WHM2016 post today is dedicated to those female musicians throughout jazz history who deserve their due, even if history obscured them.
Last year I covered Melba Liston‘s incredible influence on jazz trombone. But she wasn’t the only female musician making waves in the jazz era. Groups like The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Lil-Hardin’s All Girl Band, Lena Kidd Quartet, and Ivy Benson and Her All Girl Orchestra played with skill and swing.
While it may have been seen or imagined as a publicity schtick, all-girl orchestras provided (and continue to provide) a place for talented musicians to come together and perform in an industry that shunned them otherwise. If they weren’t singers or pianists, women musicians didn’t have much of a shot in the jazz world. On top of that, female musicians playing in male majority bands faced harassment, discrimination, and worse.
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm have been widely considered one of the highest quality all-female bands in jazz history. They broke racial barriers, set jazz sales records, and helped celebrate the end of World War II in Paris with the troops. They were largely erased from history until the 1970s, when their contributions to women at work in traditional male fields became a source of study for women’s history departments.
One of my responses to ‘it’s not every day you come across a working female trombone player’ is ‘it’s not every day we get the recognition we deserve’. History is written by the victors, and for millennia, patriarchy has been winning. Because we don’t see women working in certain fields does not mean they do not exist. Representation and recognition are key to giving women, people of color, and non-binary and transgender folks their due in a world often hostile to their success. Next time you see a hard-working female musician out at a gig, consider that she may not want to be singled out for her gender alone. Give her a compliment on her musicianship. Thank her for her example. Give the girls in the band their due.
Sources for this post: Women of Jazz, All Female Bands of the 20th Century, The Girls in the Band (documentary), America’s “Sweethearts” (NPR story)
(Previous WHM2016 posts: NUNS!, Courtly Ladies)
This week in Women’s History Month, it’s time to break down how women have been represented in art across Western history with instruments, and in particular, brass instruments.
In many cases, women holding trombones and cornettos in early art history are depicted as muses, angels, or mythological figures, and it is uncertain whether the models come from real-life inspiration.
Trombonist as Muse
Here we see Polyhymnia, muse of sacred poetry and hymns, in her natural element as trombone player. This is from a series of engravings done by Franz Brun in the 1570s depicting all nine muses (1). Why would Brun choose to give Polyhymnia a trombone? At the time, trombone served a significant role in church ensembles, providing a strong compliment to vocal lines that in larger groups imitated the sound of organ. Even as it blended well with vocal lines and organ accompaniment, it did not obscure text or meaning in the way other instruments’ textures might, and was seen as a way of enhancing spiritual communication (2). Thus, our muse of sacred poetry and hymns would know her way around a trombone, the literal muse of the religious world.
Welcome to another Women’s History Month, and as a bonus, Happy International Women’s Day!
Last year, I took a look at five different women who made or are making waves as brass musicians: Melba Liston, Megumi Kanda, Velvet Brown, Lauren Vernonie Curran, and Jan Kagarice.
This year, inspired by yet another comment at a concert along the lines of “there sure aren’t many female trombone players”, I’m going to give four short history lessons on the importance of women to brass performance through the ages. Let’s get started!
Installment Number One: Get Thee to a Nunnery!
Western music tradition as we know it today is a direct product of centuries of experimentation and development by none other than European religious orders. Monks and nuns throughout the Middle Ages composed, refined, and performed sacred works whose practice would come to define classical theory. It should be no surprise to us to learn, then, that instruments of all sorts were being played in convents across Europe, despite the Catholic Church’s decree that women should not play wind instruments. Nuns have always been pretty rebellious and evidence out of Italy suggests that some of the sisters were talented cornett and sackbut players. Speculation has it that an absence of male voices in the convent choir would lead to a need for lower voices, and what better choice than a trombone?
Says Bottrigari of the nuns of the San Vito convent:
“[the nuns play] cornetts and trombones [cornetti & tromboni], which are the most difficult of musical instruments….with such grace, and with such a nice manner [con tanta gratia, & con si gentil maniera], and such sonorous and just intonation of the notes that even people who are esteemed most excellent in the profession confess that it is incredible to anyone who does not actually see and hear it. And their passagework is not of the kind that is chopped up, furious, and continuous, such that it spoils and distorts the principal air, which the skillful composer worked ingeniously to give to the cantilena; but at times and in certain places there are such light, vivacious embellishments that they enhance the music and give it the greatest spirit” (Bottrigari-MacClintock 59; Bottrigari 49)
(Source)
Looks like things haven’t changed much. Keep up the good work, sisters!
This summer I am excited to be offering two different clinics for brass players through West Bank School of Music. Find a full list of classes and information on registration at this link.
Learn a natural approach to playing a brass instrument through healthy, holistic methods. Session 1 – “Sound”: How air makes all the difference.
Session 2 – “Music”: Brass playing is as easy as singing.
Session 3 – “Focus”: Practice techniques that create solid foundations for learning.
Prerequisites: Intermediate to Advanced
Age requirements: None
Instruments: Intermediate to Advanced trumpet, horn, trombone, baritone/euphonium, and tuba
Dates: Saturdays, 7/30 – 8/13, 10:30am – 12:00pm
Sessions: 3 sessions
Is your child starting a brass instrument at school in the fall and want a head start? Get them ready for fall band through sessions that will introduce them to their instruments, show them how to make a good sound and read music, foster proper technique, and get them going with playing songs!
Prerequisites: Elementary
Age requirements: None
Instruments: Elementary trumpet, horn, trombone, baritone/euphonium, and tuba
Dates: Trumpets/Horns: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8/9 – 8/25, 3:15pm – 4:00pm; Low Brass: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8/9 – 8/25, 4:15pm – 5:00pm
Sessions: 6 sessions, 2x/week
Performances: Lots upcoming in January. As always I keep a calendar updated on this site.
Monday, 2/8 12pm- Hamline University Lunch Recital. More info to come! These are short, informal half-hour recitals and I am happy to be the featured artist for February. I’ll be playing the David Concertino, selections from Bach Cello Suite No 2, and the first movement of Red Dragonfly by Amy Mills.
Rehearsals: Mill City Five is getting back together on Wed night to kick off a new year, our fourth year together! We hope to fill it with gigs and music. Stay tuned .
Metro meets Sunday night. Looks like I’ll be playing a solo feature on “Stardust”. Put March 17th in your brain; we may have a concert date to announce soon.
Practicing: Less than two weeks to perfect my UMN audition materials- but I’m feeling strong! I had a really inspiring lesson with Professor Ashworth last Friday and am feeling the motivation to go into the audition swinging.
Listening: Charlie Parr’s album Stumpjumper has been making me dance lately.
Teaching: My seminar at Brass Chix was all about getting to the heart of your sound- feeling the air move, imagining the shape of your tone. We made some really nice music yesterday.
Studying: Doing what pleases me.
Relaxing: Crosswords and tea.
Reading: n/a
Arranging: n/a at the moment!
Practicing: My lesson with Mr Sundstrom was this afternoon. It was phenomenal. He had great wisdom and advice to share, but honestly, the best part was hearing him play (and playing Tannhauser with him). Now: barreling toward my doctoral audition full force: some woodshedding to do but it’s time to enjoy the music.
Rehearsing: Metro Brass on Sunday night.
Performing: Last week’s performances were so much fun! I’ll have video to share of my trio recital very soon. And Gabe put on such a good recital. It was beyond exciting to listen to her perform again.
Listening: The new Punch Brothers album Phosphorescent Blues, so gorgeous and ethereal.
Teaching: What do you want the horn to do? Are you telling it or following its lead?
Relaxing: My trip to STL was really nice- lots of good conversation and warm dinners. I’d like to carry that back into my social life at home.
Reading: n/a (Well, for fun I’m reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, so…)
Arranging: n/a at the moment!
Practicing: I have a lesson with Kari Sundstrom, trombonist with the Minnesota Orchestra, in two weeks, to go over my doctoral audition materials and anything else we have time for! I’m also hard at work on the Trombone a Trois recital pieces and the two pieces I’ll be performing with my friend Gabe on her recital in St Louis this weekend.
Which reminds me: TOMORROW:
Rehearsing: TaT dress tonight. Metro Brass last night tried out some new members- it was awesome! It’s always sad to see folks go- but it’s also great to meet new players? The music world is bittersweet.
Thursday I’m out to St Louis to rehearse and perform with Gabe.
Performing: Trombone a Trois. See above. Gabe’s recital, see link above,
Listening: HAMILTON (yes, still)
Teaching: Following the phrase- what instructions are you giving yourself/the horn? They should be simple: “sound like this”. Relinquish control and it’ll be easier.
Relaxing: I went for a walk around Lake Harriet yesterday and saw a FOX! In the city! Amazing.
Lauren Husting, trombone 