Band hears WMU Brass Quintet

Published 2:04 am Thursday, November 4, 2010

Members of the Western Michigan University Brass Quintet who played at Union High School for Dowagiac band students Wednesday afternoon include, from left: Scott Thornburg, trumpet; Lin Foulk, French horn; Dan Mattson, trombone; Deanna Swoboda, tuba; and Stephen Jones, trumpet. (The Daily News/John Eby)

Members of the Western Michigan University Brass Quintet who played at Union High School for Dowagiac band students Wednesday afternoon include, from left: Scott Thornburg, trumpet; Lin Foulk, French horn; Dan Mattson, trombone; Deanna Swoboda, tuba; and Stephen Jones, trumpet. (The Daily News/John Eby)

Growing up in a town of 5,000 in northeast Missouri, Lin Foulk invested her “Pizza Hut money” in a French horn before she bought a car. She practiced at least 90 minutes “every single day” all through high school.

“I took lessons with someone who taught at the university that was an hour drive one-way,” Foulk said. “My mom could not afford to give me lessons, so my Pizza Hut money paid for those, too.

“When I was 16, I shelled out $2,000 from my Pizza Hut money to buy a French horn instead of a car. It takes a lot of dedication. You have to really want to play, and you can do that no matter where you are. I had a social life, too, but my friends knew before I went out I had to have my practicing done.”

Deanna Swoboda didn’t switch to tuba until eighth grade. She started in instrumental music in fourth grade clarinet. She and her grade-ahead sister also played the licorice stick, so they could perform duets together.

With tuba, “I started getting involved in solo and ensemble,” Swoboda said. “Solo music challenged me because I had just been playing whole notes. Then I started taking private lessons in high school. Like Lin, I traveled an hour to a college with a tuba professor.

“I practiced a couple of hours a day because I loved it. In college, because it’s your chosen career path, you start to spend really a lot more time in the practice room. I still practice a couple of hours a day.”

The two women are members of the Western Michigan University Brass Quintet, which has been in existence at the Kalamazoo campus since 1966 and visited Dowagiac Union High School and C.J. Brooks’ band Wednesday afternoon.

“All of us grew up in public school music programs just like the one you’re in and went on to college, universities and graduate school,” said Scott Thornburg, a professor of trumpet who demonstrated a piccolo trumpet in contrast to his B-flat trumpet while Stephen Jones offered his best mellow jazz Chuck Mangione impersonation on a flugelhorn.

Piccolo trumpet has a fourth valve which enables Thornburg to play lip-buzzing high-register passages with more precision starting an octave higher, while allowing retention of some lower notes.

WMU hosts a Summer Seminar on-campus camp each July “which would be incredibly good experience for any of you who are thinking seriously or semi-seriously about being a music major,” Thornburg said. “It really gives you a taste of what college is like as a music major. There is a spring audition process.”

Brass chamber music can be technically demanding — “make you leap tall buildings,” Thornburg put it.

“The technical demands are formidable. This is a physically demanding endeavor. It’s tiring playing a brass instrument. Our chops get tired. We’re always looking for great music to play that isn’t going to kill us. We’re developed players who practice like crazy every day and have for a long time, but it’s still hard work.”

Trombonist Dan Mattson, who is also a member of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, played an hour and a half to two hours daily “because I loved it. High school is the time you can improve the most. When you get to college you have to spend three to four hours. In grad school, five to six hours a day, and you may play eight hours a day.”

Jones remembers music as “recreation” at the high school level.

“I probably practiced about an hour a day and took a lesson every week,” Jones said. “I continued to have that attitude for the first year of college. About the end of my sophomore year I started getting real serious and practicing much more  — two to three hours a day on my own, plus I played in five ensembles.

“I played a lot of trumpet from that point on because I wanted to be competitive with other trumpet players. I found that if I could just get the horn out of the case, then I can practice a good long time. The hardest thing was to get the horn out and start playing. There’s nothing wrong with recreational, but the better you get, the more you feel like practicing.”

Thornburg added, “The notion of consistency in practicing is huge. I have a daily routine for the fundamentals of playing and I don’t give myself days off. I have to play every day to maintain the level expected of me as a professional and that I expect of myself.

“To dedicate yourself to excellence on your instrument, you have to approach it every day with the notion that you’re going to be better today than you were yesterday, so you can’t have a day off. Brass players especially know what it feels like if you take a day or two off from playing. It feels awful and you have to build your stamina back up. I can’t afford for that to happen.

“I practice on my own a minimum of two hours a day, but I didn’t do that when I was your age in high school. You have to audition into a music college and be accepted to pursue studies in the profession. It’s very competitive.”

Thornburg said he and Jones operate with 24 or 25 trumpet majors, which normally means four to five undergraduate openings each year.

“We hear 40 to 50 auditions” to fill those limited slots, “so you might want to get serious as soon as you can. Demands on the brass players in this kind of repertoire are considerable.”