Chris Gekker tells us everything about the trumpet!

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by legendary trumpet player Chris Gekker, to learn everything about his instrument. He's appeared on nearly 200 recordings, many times as a soloist. He was a member of the American Brass Quintet for 18 years, principal trumpet of Orchestra of St. Luke's, and taught at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music. Be prepared to learn more about the trumpet than you ever thought possible, as he takes us on a journey spanning thousands of years from the first Olympic Games to new works for the trumpet today. And stay with us to the end as he plays a few examples for us and has some heart- touching stories.

Welcome Chris, thank you so much for coming in to talk all things trumpet, I'm especially excited because trumpet was actually my very first instrument.

00:00:55

Chris Gekker: Thank you John, and I am grateful for this opportunity.

00:00:58

John Banther: Now, there's a question I like to start with, and I think it might be interesting with the trumpet because of how ubiquitous it is, but how would you describe your instrument to someone who's never seen it before, never heard it, maybe they've never been to a concert before, how would you describe it?

00:01:14

Chris Gekker: I would say in general, the trumpet is an instrument of dramatic entrances, and it has been since the earliest days of human history. In the earliest written documents we have, like the Sumerian Epic Gilgamesh from 2100 BC there is mention of the trumpet, and it's almost in sort of a generic term, in other words, an instrument of announcement. And every culture around the world, whether it's a steer or a ram horn, a conch shell, every culture around the world has had an instrument of authority and announcement that was expected to project to large numbers of people. And in days, of course, before amplification, this was very important. The very first Olympic Games in Greece in the 700 BC had, in addition to the athletic competitions, which were all related to war activities, like the javelin and sprinting, there was a trumpet competition, and the prizes were given to the person that could project the farthest. Because that was a matter of life and death in ancient society, the ability to project information over long distances.

00:02:21

John Banther: Now, that's a contest I don't think we should do today, which trumpet player can play the loudest.

00:02:26

Chris Gekker: Well, every year at the International Trumpet Guild Conference, if you go into the instrument tryout room, it encapsulates the Olympic Games experience.

00:02:35

John Banther: That's an experience I wish everyone could get at some point, go into a room, an instrument demonstration room.

00:02:40

Chris Gekker: And my advice is run away as fast as you can.

00:02:45

John Banther: So, declamatory, we really hear that in the music, and as you said, this is one that goes back thousands of years, not just like we have flutes made of bones, from 10,000, 30, 000 years ago or whatever, but we have documents and things of how it was used in government, in military, sending messages, all those things, back thousands of years.

00:03:07

Chris Gekker: Yes, and in fact, the trumpet was always associated with the monarchy or whoever was in charge. So, even into the medieval city- states , it was against the law to even possess a trumpet unless you belonged to the guild. It would be somewhat similar in today's society, let's say like the old Kojak TV show, and I know I'm dating myself, but if you could whip out a siren and put on top of your car and then go through any traffic jam. So, in the ancient city- states, not ancient, but medieval city- states, to have a trumpet that would announce enemy approaching, or fire, or something, that was a civic responsibility.

00:03:44

John Banther: Okay, so you don't put blue and red lights on your car, for example.

00:03:47

Chris Gekker: Right, yes.

00:03:48

John Banther: Okay. So, let's go back to some of the basics of the instrument. How does it produce a sound?

00:03:55

Chris Gekker: Well, the vibrating lips produce a standing sound wave inside the instrument, and this is a rabbit hole that brass players go through because I know a lot of teachers will emphasize taking a big breath and blowing through the instrument. But in fact, air does not move inside any instrument, and then there's no correlation between the movement of air and the production of sound. I learned this from Arnold Jacobs too, a famous tuba player and perhaps the greatest pedagogue of the 20th century in the brass world. And so, a sound wave is produced inside the instrument and projects out. The air does not move inside the instrument, the speed of sound is approximately 770 miles per hour, the fastest movement of air ever recorded on earth F5 tornado approaching 300 miles an hour. So, there (inaudible) to move air... And if you're walking down the street and hear someone practicing an instrument inside their house, the sound waves are going through the walls of the house to you. So, sound waves go through air...

By the way, sound waves go through water four times faster than air, close to 3000 miles an hour. So, that's how a pod of whales can communicate with another pod of whales in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away. And sound waves go through rock, stone, steel, everything. Anyway, so we take a breath and the inhalation produces an internal compression foundation, which allows us to produce the sound. And brass instruments are more strenuous, there's a greater internal pressure than other instruments except oboe. Actually, trumpet is the highest compressed instrument and oboe is second, even before other brass instruments.

00:05:41

John Banther: Really? They make us think it's the opposite.

00:05:43

Chris Gekker: Well. And trumpet is literally the only instrument that you can traumatically injure yourself playing, in other words, rip a nerve, broken blood vessels, hernias-

00:05:54

John Banther: Passing out.

00:05:54

Chris Gekker: Yeah. Now and then you'll run an oboe player with a neck hernia, but it's relatively rare. And in all the other instruments, and believe me, injuries playing musical instruments are serious and debilitating, and very, very a grave subject, for sure. But generally, with every other instrument, it's an overuse injury. So, carpal tunnel, arthritis, tendonitis, even dystonia tends to be an overuse related injury. So, it's a little bit like on a track team, the trumpeters are sprinters, we're the 100- meter sprinters that can tear an ACL or a hamstring, whereas most other instruments are like the middle distance and long distance runners, are just simply the pounding over time, and any string player who has played the Schubert Ninth Symphony can attest to this, just the simple repetition over time can lead to various serious injuries. But it's different.

00:06:45

John Banther: That's a good thing to point out, in that we can get injuries from playing an instrument, and it sounds like the trumpet is one. I've seen trumpet players putting ice on their lips after a concert even.

00:06:56

Chris Gekker: Right, the adjective, the say high note trumpet player, and everyone knows what you're talking about, like in a big band days, they're speaking of a Maynard Ferguson or a (inaudible) , you cannot put that adjective in front of any other instrument with any meaning. It takes great skill to play in a high register on any instrument, violin, tuba, flute... But it would be absurd to say, oh, so- and- so's a high note violinist.

00:07:19

John Banther: Yeah.

00:07:20

Chris Gekker: But trumpet, we know right away what you mean. And I think that the excitement of hearing a trumpet play like that is embedded in us as human beings, from those ancient days. Because all of us, whether you're in a nightclub or wherever, you have a sense of that it's actually a dangerous act that that person's doing. So, it has sort of extra drama. Now, the trumpet can be played beautifully, softly, and for me personally, the most beautiful aspect of the trumpet is how lyrical and song- like it can be. But that announcing dramatic gesture, idea, is something that is always going to be a big part of the trumpet. And in those ancient documents, trumpet is almost sort of a generic term for instrument of announcing. Yeah.

00:08:07

John Banther: Okay. Well, let's go into that a little bit, the declamatory announcing aspect of it, because it sounds like that's kind of how it was used early on, going to now our purposes from Ancient Egypt or whatever to maybe the 14, 15 or 1600s into the 1700s. How was the trumpet used in these early times in Renaissance and Baroque music?

00:08:30

Chris Gekker: We can start a little early, like the Romans made great use of brass instruments, and they had three specific types, and one of the types looks a little bit more like a sousaphone, it's a curled brass thing that goes over the shoulder. And then, when the Roman Empire dissolved around 500 AD, there was a gap where the trumpet was really not known, and it's about 300 years before there's mention again, and that's with Charlemagne at about 880. And strangely enough, this is according to things I've read and researched, that the art of trumpet making was kept alive mostly in Ireland. So there were these Irish monks that brought Charlemagne's court these trumpets, and then it started with the Holy Roman Empire. So, again, the trumpet was reserved for the royalty and such. And then the instruments start to evolve, there is a slide trumpet that appears... First of all, the early trumpets had no valves, they were like bugles, and the valve mechanism, which allows us to play chromatically was patented around 1815.

Prior to that, there was a little bit of time, a couple 20 years where there was some keyed trumpets, Anton Weidinger who commissioned the Haydn and the Hummel Trumpet Concerto among a few other works, in the late 1700s, early 1800s, had a keyed trumpet of his own design, which looked like a bugle with saxophone keys, so to speak. But then the valve mechanism later, which was connected to the idea of the steam engine piston, which had been patented 40 years before, 30 years before or so, allowed for an airtight instrument changing, (inaudible) the key trumpet had the open holes which compromise the sound to some degree. Those same open holes which exist on woodwind instruments are not as dire because of the internal pressure. If the internal pressure is not as dramatic, so the sound is then not compromised. But on a trumpet where the internal pressure is, so to speak, is sort of off the charts, then the minute there's a leak, it dramatically affects the tone. Anyway, so there was a slide trumpet, which was a single telescoping slide. Now-

00:10:48

John Banther: It's like the smallest trombone you can think of, sort of.

00:10:50

Chris Gekker: Well, I'm going to get to that, because when there are wars and such, there's horrible conflict and tragedy for so many innocent people, there's also cultural exchange. And in the Fourth Crusades, which were Christian armies going to the Middle East and clashing with the Islamic armies, the Islamic armies had slide trumpets, and they used them as a military weapon. And there are documents that refer to the Knights of the Christian army, their horses being very discombobulated by the sound of the cacophony of these slide trumpets. Well, there's also cultural exchange, however we can imagine it in a war, and some of these slide trumpets were brought back to Europe. And in the Renaissance there were these slide trumpets, and there would usually be outdoor instruments in concert with two shawms, sort of oboe- like woodwind instruments, and they played at outdoor fairs and celebrations and dances.

Now, someone in the 1300s had the brilliant idea, if you have a single slide, if we double it, that you'll get more bang for the buck, so to speak. And this is where the first trombones were invented, both in Italy, Southern France and in Germany. But that necessitates a bigger instrument. So, the word trombone, actually, if you go the root of the word means big trumpet.

00:12:11

John Banther: Yep.

00:12:12

Chris Gekker: So, that's where the trombone... And anyway, so then we have in the Baroque era, the clarino, which is a valveless natural horn, which plays the harmonic scale. So, for people that are not have a background in this, in the low register, the intervals are quite large, and as you climb up into the high register, suddenly you can start playing a scale because the partials are close to each other. And that is why Baroque trumpet playing is literally almost always in the high register, because that's literally the only place the scale is possible. At the same time, there was another instrument called the cornetto or zinc, and this was a sort of hybrid instrument with a buzzing mouthpiece, but more like a recorder, and made of wood and sometimes ivory and covered in leather. And for instance, the (inaudible) , when we hear brass music of Gabrieli, that was actually written for the cornetto, which was a softer, more woodwind- like instrument.

So, nowadays we generally hear Gabrieli sort of almost Wagnerian, thunderous. When you hear Gabrieli played by original instruments, it's very ethereal, very magical. I've been to St. Mark's in Venice, and talked to the music director there, and speaking about how when you hear our original instruments, it sounds sort of magical and very mystical, versus... The joke is that, and you and I both know this, John, when you play Gabrieli like Wagner, it still works.

00:13:35

John Banther: It still works. It's fun.

00:13:35

Chris Gekker: Yeah. The other interesting thing about that, just parenthetically, the word antiphonal, which literally only means alternating voices, and in Europe, in general, they don't play these things at distances from each other, and we just assume that that means choirs that are far apart, but it actually referred to the Gabrieli clan, which was mostly active around 1580 to 1620, to their style of composition where voices answered each other back and forth. And in St. Marks, in most places, the group sat intermingled, it wasn't... The reason we view this music as antiphonal for separate choirs comes from that recording in the mid- 60s, famous recording with Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia orchestras playing, and in the early days of stereo, we'd have the brass choirs coming out of different speakers, that's literally... The music director of St. Marks was laughing about that, it was Allan Dean and me, over there talking to him, and how the word antiphonal has changed its meaning.

00:14:38

John Banther: And I'll put some video on the show notes page of both of these things, of the original instruments where they're closer together, and then some of what we do today, the brass choir spread out in different parts of a hall.

00:14:53

Chris Gekker: I've seen people pose it that, they'll show the Venice outdoor square with groups playing different corners, but they weren't playing Gabrieli, they were playing dances, and it was not the church music.

00:15:07

John Banther: There's two works I want to mention and hear from you on, the first one, and these are both in the Baroque period, the first one is Bach, and that Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, we know he wrote, or we have several surviving six of these concertos. The second one really features the trumpet, and right now we're hearing a recording of you playing this. Talk to us about this because this seems out of nowhere really hard and kind of like, I don't know, maybe an Olympic event for a trumpet player.

00:15:42

Chris Gekker: It is, it's commonly viewed as the highest piece on a repertoire. There's actually a concerto by Michael Haydn from the 1760s, which goes higher. But yeah, so Bach Brandenburg Concerto, it's a very interesting story, he wrote these for himself. As a young man in the 17- teens, this was years, years before he went to Leipzig... And sometimes I hear people saying, well, he wrote the Brandenburg for Gottfried Reiche who was his trumpeter in Leipzig, and this is not true, this was years before he met Gottfried Reiche. And nothing he wrote for Reiche went that high. So, Bach was studying Italian concertos and it was quite inspiring for all of us, such a great musician, who really was like a student his whole life, and he was copying out Vivaldi, and Corelli, and such like that, and he wrote these six concertos, not solo concertos, but concerto in the original meaning, which meant to be in harmony.

And the early version of that, he simply wrote in French, by the way, on the title page, music for diverse instruments, all lowercase. So, he sort of put it away in a drawer, then as a young man, of course, he's going for gigs, and there was an opening at the Duke of Brandenburg, who had a fine chamber orchestra. So, he literally re- gifted the pieces, and he didn't get the job, by the way. There's no... I'm going on Christoph Wolff, biography of Bach on this, there is no record of the Brandenburgs ever getting performed.

00:17:18

John Banther: Wow.

00:17:19

Chris Gekker: Yeah. And it doesn't mean they didn't, but there's no record. And generally, Germans keep good records, I know my... So, it's for trumpet in F, generally, bach wrote for trumpet in D, so it's like a minor third higher. The voicing interaction with the oboe and flute is a little bit different than you would see in the B minor mass (inaudible) . And there have been some people, this is where some people start to really get their hackles up, there are some people that argue that it was meant to be played down the octave. And I've seen trumpet players just react furiously at this. As someone who performed it over 100 times, and many times, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Europe, and Asia, so I have done it, I think there's a lot of argument that it may be.

Because there's very little trumpet in F in the Baroque era. Telemann wrote a few cantatas with trumpet in F, but he never goes to the high F, his highest note is the high fifth. And then there's this, it's the ear test. So, this is a little bit funny to say, Bach has a sound, and he doesn't really deviate all that much from it. So, we have 200 or so cantatas, he wrote 300, 100 are lost, whatever, that of the 200, there are some absolute masterpieces, a few, and then there's a lot of ones that are just really great, and really good, and they all sort of sound like Bach.

So, the Brandenburg second with the trumpet is such a outlier, and that's why it's very exciting in concerts, aside from, again, the audience being excited by this high, brilliant sound. And I've been there, I've been when the audience just reacts like crazy, in Carnegie Hall, we've encored the second, the third movement, and things like that. But I have a funny story, I was getting ready in, I was many years in New York, and first trumpet in the orchestra of St. Luke's, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and we were getting ready for a tour of Spain, and we had two programs. One was Mozart and Mendelssohn's symphonies, and the other was the complete Brandenburgs.

And Jaime Laredo, the violinist/ conductor, great musician, good friend, was conducting. So, I remember we had a rehearsal one day in New York, and I got the things mixed up, so I didn't have my piccolo trumpet.

00:19:41

John Banther: Oh no.

00:19:42

Chris Gekker: And he said, we have to do the Brandenburgs, and I said, okay, I'll just play it on a big trumpet down the octave. And I'll never forget, we finished the first movement and everyone looked at me, and says, that's so nice... And the thing is... And Barry Tuckwell recorded on horn, there's Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of his recordings is down the octave. It sounds more like other Bach. Now, it's not as dramatic and not as sort of exhilarating in that way, but I can see the argument. Anyway, having said that, I've had people just sneer at me for saying this, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.

But I think one thing is important, as trumpet players when we play it's not a trumpet concerto, there are four soloists, and we have to hear the flute and the oboe. Last thing about the Brandenburgs, Bach did play his, later in his life, he played his fifth Brandenburg, which some people have called the first keyboard concerto, and he did make use of that, and he often redid his works and rearranged them, and the first Brandenburg, which has the two horn parts, he adapted some of that for his hunt cantata because he wanted to evoke the hunting horns.

00:20:53

John Banther: I'm reminded of a comment you made earlier about the trumpet also being like a sprinter in the Olympic Games because this work is kind of like an Olympic game for trumpet, and if you think of a sprinter, an hour before a concert, they're probably stretching, maybe they eat a banana, they're hydrating... A very short, funny story on this, you know Vince DiMartino?

00:21:13

Chris Gekker: Good friend of mine, yeah.

00:21:15

John Banther: Apparently the story is, an hour before a performance of him doing Brandenburg too, someone saw him eating a burger, fries, and a coke, like an hour before the concert.

00:21:26

Chris Gekker: Yeah. Vince is like a big brother to me, and I've known him for many years. A great, great man, great teacher. I am more in that category. The last time I played it, right when I got the job in Maryland, to come down here, this was 1998, I was playing a Brandenburg in Washington Park downtown, near New York University, Washington Square Park, and I remember I was sitting on a bench and I hadn't had a chance to eat that day, and I got a McDonald's Big Mac meal. And someone took a picture of me, I was eating the Big Mac meal right before plain at-

00:22:00

John Banther: Okay, so this is maybe a thing for some trumpet players.

00:22:05

Chris Gekker: If it's important, it's important, if it's not important, it's not important. So, that's the way I look at it. Yeah,

00:22:11

John Banther: I cannot eat... Someone once tried to give us lasagna before a concert, and I could have thrown up.

00:22:16

Chris Gekker: Well, I would fall asleep in the slow movement if I had lasagna.

00:22:21

John Banther: Now, another work I wanted to talk about because of something you also mentioned earlier about trumpets and being in guilds, is Handel's Messiah, another big trumpet moment, I think, in the Baroque period, but it's also one that I think at the premiere, like the trumpet players aren't part of the orchestral guild or whatever, they're like a separate royalty. They're there at the courtesy of the king or whatever, and their performance, is what I heard.

00:22:48

Chris Gekker: Yeah, I don't know the details of that, I've heard things like that. I know the very first performance, which I think is 1741, and I think it's in Dublin, if I'm not mistaken, there was actually a review of it, and one of the flaws of the national trumpet was a certain partial, which is a fourth higher than the tonic note. And so, if you're playing AC, the F above it is kind of in between an F and an F sharp, and this can be remedied in certain ways. Some people can do it with their lip. Box trumpet player, Gottfried Reiche had a circular horn he could manipulate with his hand, but there's, in that very first review, the critic criticizes the trumpet player for not adjusting that note correctly.

00:23:33

John Banther: Oh my gosh.

00:23:34

Chris Gekker: Yeah.

00:23:34

John Banther: You come up here and play it.

00:23:36

Chris Gekker: Right?

00:23:36

John Banther: That's what I would say. Yeah.

00:23:39

Chris Gekker: I started my Messiah experience when I was 16, and just stopped playing it last year, hundreds of times. I want to tell a story that's very touching, but I worked a lot with Robert Shaw, the great choral conductor, and we were doing the Messiah in Carnegie Hall, and it was a very busy time of year, holiday time, and we're rehearsing it, and the orchestra was playing a million times, and we're tired. And Robert Shaw was a real gentleman, besides being a great musician, and he stopped and he said, " I know we're all tired," he said, " I want to just tell you what I say to myself often, I say there'll be a lot of people there that are hearing for the very first time." And we all nodded. And then he said something that just made the chills go down your spine, he said, " There'll be other people that are hearing it for the last time," that really hit all of us, and yeah.

00:24:34

John Banther: That's a tremendous and very true statement. Always remember it's sometimes the first time and something that I don't think about, maybe it is also the last time that we're hearing it.

00:24:44

Chris Gekker: Well, I sometimes draw the analogy like you're at the airport, waiting for your relatives, your grandparents are coming in on a flight, and that may be the 15000th time that pilot has landed that plane, but you want them paying attention.

00:24:58

John Banther: That's right. Yeah, that's a good point.

00:25:01

Chris Gekker: Yeah.

00:25:02

John Banther: So, going into the classical period, which is more compressed mid- part of the 1700s into the early part of the 1800s, what's happening here? Because you hear a definite change in the style from Baroque, where things are less decorated, or florid, or complicated, more lyrical or song- like, what's happening for the trumpet here?

00:25:25

Chris Gekker: Well, a few things, and one thing, the trumpet guilds are weakening.

00:25:30

John Banther: Oh no.

00:25:30

Chris Gekker: So, the guilds, which were a fabric of the medieval cities, cities now no longer have walls around them, it's not... There's more free trade. It's the very, very first edges of the Industrial Revolution. To this day, if you go to Kraków in Poland, on the old city walls, a trumpeter goes up there and starts to play a call, and stops midway through... There's some poems called the Trumpeter of Kraków. And from the 1300s when a trumpeter was going on the old city walls and announcing alarm, enemy approaching, it was the Mongol army, and the story goes that an arrow hit him in the throat midway through the bugle. So, they recreate that in Kraków, Poland to this day. Anyway.

00:26:16

John Banther: Wow.

00:26:17

Chris Gekker: So, as we get into the late 1700s and early 1800s, cities are different, and we no longer have this sort of fortress mentality, there's more free trade going, there's a growing middle class. So, the trumpet guilds start to dissolve, so to speak. There's obviously some great trumpeters around because there was a few concertos written, but you could almost say that the middle class had weakened, so much so that when Mozart reorchestrated the Messiah, the piece we've just been talking about, and that famous aria we were speaking of is entitled The Trumpet Shall Sound, in the Mozart version of Messiah, it's mostly a French horn solo.

00:26:56

John Banther: Oh no.

00:26:58

Chris Gekker: So, that speaks volumes as to the changing culture. The manner of music too, the Haydn symphonies, Mozart symphonies, operas, it's just a different view of the trumpet, we don't have that sort of brilliant excitement that the Baroque music had. And so, the trumpets are challenging, in fact, some of the most challenging things we do, but they're not very showy. In fact, I always tell my students, when you're playing a Mozart symphony, that it's very difficult, but you'll only be noticed if you do something wrong. So, if you do a perfect job, you're like a referee in a ball game, who called a really good game and no one will know that you were there. So, anyway, so that happened during the classical era. During this time in the classical era though that we do have these concertos from Anton Weidinger, Hummel, Haydn... Haydn, 1796, Hummel 1803, and there was some other works too.

And then, in the mid, around 1815 when the valve gets patented, now we have the first cornet pistons. Now, cornet literally means in French, little horn, and the first cornet players were horn players, and they attached these valves, and this is a big thing in Paris. So, the Paris Opera was the first group to have piston cornets, and it was a man named Forestier who was the solo cornet of the Paris Opera. And this leads to the very first appearance of the valved cornet in orchestra music, which is around 1830, the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. And for a while in the early Romantic era, the trumpet section would have two natural trumpets, from the Baroque era, and two valved cornets. And this extends up through Tchaikovsky, Capriccio Italien, and various other works.

But by the mid 1800s, we start to see valved trumpets proliferate. The piston valve is patented around 1815, the rotary valve is patented in Vienna around 1832, and then an advancement of the piston valve, literally the kind that we see today, is patented in late 1850s. And then, we start to see these deep- toned trumpets in low F, low E, and low E flat, and this is like Parsifal by Wagner, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky fourth and fifth symphonies... Actually, I'm sorry, the fourth symphony. The fifth symphony, he was writing for trumpet in A. And this extends up through Debussy, La Mer, Richard Strauss. Then in the early 1900s, we start to see the modern B- flat and C trumpets emerge, Mahler's Fifth Symphony, written around 1905, sometime around there, I could be corrected on this. But it opens with an announcement from the new B- flat trumpet, the C trumpet starts to emerge with Debussy.

00:30:02

John Banther: So, it sounds like a 100 year journey, basically, from all these many different types of trumpets, and there's still so many different types of trumpets, but it's coalesced now around B- flat and C in the early 1900s?

00:30:13

Chris Gekker: Yes. And that's why trumpet players have to transpose all the time because we are recreating music from these various eras and trumpets were written in different keys. So, transposition is a real big deal for us to learn how to do.

00:30:35

John Banther: So, now we've moved into the 1900s, we've heard some of the big concertos mentioned, like Haydn and Hummel, some of the orchestral parts almost feel like concertos themselves, Mahler's Fifth Symphony. This is almost like maybe the end result of a declamatory statement for a trumpet, I'm thinking from the beginning of its first use all the way to how Mahler uses it in that symphony.

00:31:07

Chris Gekker: Yeah, well, all his symphonies use trumpet. It's interesting, and this ties in again with what we were speaking earlier, the duration of time that a trumpet player plays in a Mahler symphony is far less than any other instruments, far less than the French horns, for instance, he knew what he was doing in terms of the strenuousness. So, a Mahler symphony, pick one, or except the third, which is the longest, any of the others, depending on who's conducting hour 10, hour 15, whatever, and the trumpet part, if you played it non- stop from beginning to end, softly... Because I've done this. It's like 12, 14 minutes of trumpet playing. But yet, so someone walks out of the hall and goes, wow, those trumpets, we played less than any other instrument on stage except maybe the trombones, and yet it makes such an impression.

00:31:53

John Banther: That's true, because another work where that is especially true in a particular moment, I'm thinking of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, which I got to play earlier this year. But there is a trumpet lick, it's just an octave leap... It looks quite simple on the page, but I don't even look in that direction when that part is coming up. That is truly all of a sudden doing some kind of circus or acrobatic act.

00:32:25

Chris Gekker: We call that a banana peel moment. In fact, you don't really know whether you played it right until right after you've played it. Because it's so immediate, so dramatic. I make-

00:32:35

John Banther: Like a car crash.

00:32:37

Chris Gekker: Yeah, I make a joke that there was, believe it or not, a trumpet player who sight- read that piece. Because there has to be.

00:32:46

John Banther: Yeah.

00:32:47

Chris Gekker: And they just sort of played it. And then ever since then, it's been a headcase situation.

00:32:51

John Banther: Oh my gosh.

00:32:52

Chris Gekker: But yeah, and I've done it, and luckily... I did a performance that was recorded live, and luckily I escaped unscathed, but yeah, it's quite a moment for sure.

00:33:04

John Banther: I never thought about what it would be like to read that part for the first time, thinking, oh, they made a mistake, I don't play for how long and then I do this? Oh no, it must be wrong.

00:33:12

Chris Gekker: The octave C is not in and of itself that big a deal, I think there's harder things in many other pieces, but it's just so naked, and it's also set up that if you mess up, it's extremely hilarious for everyone, it's literally like a clown slipping on a banana peel.

00:33:32

John Banther: Yeah, yeah. There's just not much... You can't save it, there's not another half of a phrase where you can make up for it.

00:33:40

Chris Gekker: Right. Yeah.

00:33:42

John Banther: So, we've mentioned a little bit, there are so many types of trumpets, and the orchestra really coalesced in the early- 1900s around B- flat and C. Piccolo trumpet, that is a very small higher sounding one. There's the flugelhorn, which is more... The flugelhorn sounds more, it's like a horn in a sense because it's conical versus cylindrical. Right?

00:34:09

Chris Gekker: Right. The flugelhorn and the euphonium are actually sax horns, what Adolf or Antoine Sax developed in the mid- 1800s, with a short lead pipe and the long taper to the bell. Flugelhorn means winghorn in German, and it was originally a military signaling instrument, evocative of the old days of the medieval cities. And the idea was at the wings of a formation, whether it was a military or hunting formation, you would station a flugelhorn, a winghorn, that would signal for the formation to pivot or turn like that. The French, who for good reasons don't like to use any German words for anything, refer to the flugelhorn as bugle. So, if you read a French piece, it says, for bugle, they mean it for flugelhorn. We associate in America with jazz.

And Clark Terry... It had used a little bit that, the Lunceford Band used flugelhorns in a section early, but the first soloist that really broke ground was Clark Terry, and was a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. And they were going one of those state department tours. And I played in a big band that Clark led in the 70s, and he told the story that he got one in Italy, it was a French model, a Selmer, and one of the tunes Ellington did was Perdido by Juan Tizol, and it was a feature for Clark, and he would go out and play a solo. And he walked out of stage with his flugelhorn, started playing, and he finished his solo and he started walking back to the section, and Duke Ellington yelled out, " Stay out there," and he just kept playing.

So, for then on, Perdido became a thing where Clark would play his solo, but then he would comment on the flugelhorn, interact with the band. And so, we associate with Chuck Mangione and various people, but it was really Clark Terry who began the association of... And it's a great jazz instrument, it's phenomenal.

00:36:02

John Banther: And you've mentioned the flugelhorn being popular in jazz, and that's how we've seen the trumpet really branch out into every genre of music, it sounds like, in the last 60, 70 years, into the 20th and 21st centuries, the trumpet's basically everywhere.

00:36:20

Chris Gekker: And I would say, I have no problem saying that Louis Armstrong is the most influential brass player of the 20th century, and if someone wants to really quibble with me, that's fine, but he's going to be in the conversation. And he was at one point the most recognized person on earth, he would show up in Europe, and talking about the early 30s, and there would be tens of thousands of people at the stations, he made some of the very first really million dollar selling records, the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens in the late 1920s, and he revolutionized the trumpet. And he, actually, his whole career was amazing. As an elderly man, late in his career, when he did Mack the Knife, he actually replaced the Beatles on the top 40. It's unbelievable what he did.

But it's also very significant what he did in terms of expression, rhythm... He revolutionized music in so many ways. And jazz is, my students will start rolling their eyes at this, so I sort of get on a soapbox about this. We use the word classical a lot, and classical can mean several things. It can mean generally the Western canon, in other words, the music that we start with, Italy and the Renaissance, and spreading throughout Europe. And so, we call it Western music, whether it's Monteverdi or Stravinsky, we call that classical music. It can mean specifically the classical era, which means the death of Bach in 1750 to, perhaps, I don't know, the Eroica symphony in the early 1800s.

00:37:54

John Banther: That's exactly what I say.

00:37:56

Chris Gekker: And then, the other meaning, which I like the most, is it means art that is beyond fad or opinion. And I think, in that sense, jazz is America's classical music contribution to world culture, and this is something that's recognized more overseas than in America, sadly. And the thing I would say, you don't have to like it, you don't have to like Thelonious Monk, or Sonny Rollins, or Billie Holiday, but no one will replace them. They're there no matter what any of us think. Similarly, you don't have to Bruckner or Debussy, but they're there, and they're not going to go anywhere. So, in that sense, jazz is to me a classical music. And sometimes people sort of cast shade on that, meaning I'm trying to promote that it becomes sort of stiff and formal, and that's a disservice to the Western canon because the great Western composers, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, up through Franz Liszt, were all great improvisers, and improvisation was a part of the Western canon, and to some degree faded in the first half of the 20th century. I think it's coming back more now. So, yeah.

00:39:08

John Banther: I think so. And the trumpet is an instrument that's, like you said with those people, it's there, it's not going anywhere. And I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you on that, especially since you described earlier the trumpet being also like a combat weapon. So, I'm not going to fight you on that one.

00:39:27

Chris Gekker: Yeah, Louis, as a young man in New Orleans, he would talk about Buddy Bolden calling the crowd from over the river, it's that sort of announcement kind of thing. And then, beautifully soft, some of the ballads with Miles Davis, it brought a range of expression to the trumpet that I don't think anyone has ever approached, even Mahler or people we're talking about. It's really indelible in our culture.

00:39:57

John Banther: Range of expression, I love that phrase, and I think that sums all that up perfectly. We're going to take a quick break, and then right after that we're going to hear you play the trumpet.

Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music is brought to you by WETA Classical. Join us for the music anytime, day or night, at WETAclassical. org, where you'll also find educational resources like Take Note, the WETA Classical playlist and our blog, Classical score. Find all that and more at WETAclassical. org. Okay. Now, one of our favorite parts where we get to hear you play, what is the first thing you're going play for us, Chris?

00:40:44

Chris Gekker: Will be the opening of the fourth movement, the finale of Dvořák's Eighth Symphony. And it opens with two trumpets playing in unison, a fanfare. These were written, the part is written for the D trumpet, and in modern days, the D trumpet is a rather small instrument higher than the B flat, but Dvořák was writing for a deep toned D trumpet, similar to the instruments I referred to earlier when I was talking about the low F, low E, low E flat trumpets. So, this was a large instrument in D. We spoke about transposition, I'm playing on a B flat trumpet, which I enjoy playing a lot. And so, the notes that I see on the page, I have to transpose up in major third.

00:41:23

John Banther: Fantastic, Chris, and I love the declamatory nature of this fanfare and the symphony. I've seen it described as not a fanfare for some kind of military action, but a fanfare or an invitation to a dance.

00:42:03

Chris Gekker: That's exactly why I think the whole symphony is like a folk dance. And right after this we have this very gentle melody in the cellos, and it's almost like the trumpet's calling everyone to the dance floor, and then we're going to have this sort of very tender dance.

00:42:19

John Banther: And you said you're playing the B- flat trumpet?

00:42:20

Chris Gekker: Yes. Mm-hmm.

00:42:21

John Banther: So, when you have something like Dvořák, you said it was written for maybe like a D, something different?

00:42:26

Chris Gekker: In this case, yeah.

00:42:27

John Banther: So, when you're playing something like this on B- flat, do you mentally have to go somewhere or do something to play in a particular style that that other instrument is embodying?

00:42:39

Chris Gekker: Well, I'm not sure that we think too historically here, we're trying to play in tune and get the right sort of orchestral sound, which should be brilliant but warm, we do not want to be ever be strident. It should carry and have power but not be shrill. In this case, the two trumpet playing in unison, and it's a challenge to play it well in tune, particularly that last low note, with the diminuendo. So, getting all those things in order, and there's a lot involved. Orchestral music on the surface can often be very simple, but simple things like playing Taps at a funeral can often be quite difficult.

00:43:21

John Banther: And we can talk about that for a second because some might think, oh, you play soft, when you diminuendo and you get softer, you're just getting softer and it's easier, but the muscles required to hold everything in place to play in tune and not shake and all that stuff while you're soft is quite a lot, it takes a lot of control to play that, as you said, in tune and diminuendo.

00:43:43

Chris Gekker: Well, every brass instrument is based on the internal compression that we all establish when we play. And compression, which is also a higher pressure... Now, high pressure sometimes often brass teachers are teaching, oh, you have to play with less pressure, but pressure is part of sound, and higher pressure equals higher notes. When a brass instrument is climbing, ascending to the higher register, and crescendoing, we're actually getting more and more efficient, and as we descend and get softer, we're actually losing efficiency. So, that's the hardest part of controlling. And that's one of the characteristics of a really good orchestral player, and much of what we practice is how to diminuendo while we're descending.

And that's something overlooked by a lot of people because it's sort of like the glittery object in the room, a brass instrument is soaring in high register is what we all are drawing attention to, and we figure the opposite of that must be very easy. It's actually harder to do. Again, I'll bring back the airplane thing, takeoffs are usually okay, landings are often quite difficult because a plane also, as it climbs into the atmosphere, is increasing its internal pressure and becoming more stable. As we descend, we're losing that compression. Same with weather, a high- pressure zone, blue skies, calm weather, low pressure is stormy, cold front, really low pressure is a hurricane, with a barometer dropping. So, that's exactly that sort of analogy.

00:45:12

John Banther: Okay, I love that. What is another thing you can play for us?

00:45:16

Chris Gekker: This is a trumpet solo from George Gershwin's American in Paris.

00:45:57

John Banther: That was so beautiful, Chris. It's also one of my favorite solos from the piece American in Paris, except the tuba solo, of course, that happens later. But tell us about the sound here and your approach to this.

00:46:10

Chris Gekker: Gershwin writes to be played with a felt crown, which means sort of a hat over the bell, and I'm just using a regular old rain hat. I want to say something about mutes that relates to the jazz discussion earlier. The origin of mutes goes back centuries in Europe, and keep in mind again, what I said earlier about the trumpet was always an instrument associated with royalty, monarchy, and such, and used in court to announce and celebrate coronations, weddings, victories and such, but funerals as well.

00:46:50

John Banther: Okay.

00:46:50

Chris Gekker: And this is according to some British histories that I've read, the early mutes was an expression of the court to express mourning, so the brass players would put these objects in the bells instruments, mute or dampen the sound, and this was to show how sad the occasion was. And the first use of the mute in concert music is Monteverdi Opera in the early 1600s, and to this day, if an instrumentalist sees a straight mute or just regular mute, that's the mute we mean, which is the European straight mute. Which can be loud or soft, in fact, Richard Strauss says in his orchestration discussions that the loudest trumpet is usually with a metal straight mute. And of course, he's talking about German trumpets, which tend to be darker, so if you want to cut through using that metal mute.

Every other mute comes from the jazz tradition, specifically from New Orleans. So, the bucket hat plunger, even the Harmon mute, which was patented in Chicago, but it was patented by a man who had watched King Oliver, Joe Oliver, who was a New Orleans cornetist, playing in Chicago, who had invented a mute of that design. So, every other mute other than the European straight mute, the concertino, as they say in European music, is a development from the jazz tradition.

00:48:17

John Banther: I didn't quite know that, but other than the straight mute, yeah, it was all from jazz, and the ones that you said are, the names describe themselves, the hat, which is what you're using right now, the hat over a bell, or a crown royal bag, which is what you see often, or a plunger, the Harmon mute that is harder to describe, I'll put a picture up on the show notes page, but that's a Miles Davis.

00:48:39

Chris Gekker: Well, yeah, it started as, it's kind of a wah- wah mute, and it does have a little cup. And in cartoons you can sort of go like a laughing sound. Now, Miles Davis took that cup out and played it, and he also played it always into a microphone. So, it had a particular smoky kind of very internal midnight kind of sound, when you hear him play ballads on the Harmon mute. Yeah.

00:49:07

John Banther: And I'll put some video on the show notes page demonstrating some of that aspect, especially the wah-wah aspect of the Harmon mute. You got to see it. What is the last thing you're going to play for us, Chris?

00:49:19

Chris Gekker: This is the opening of Eric Ewazen's Sonata for trumpet and piano, which he composed in 1995. And this is a piece that he and I recorded that same year, and he's on the piano. I've been involved with composers my whole life, and it's always been a big part of my career to work with composers. And in fact, Eric and I are from the same class at Eastman School of Music. So, I played his music all the way through school.

00:49:46

John Banther: Okay.

00:49:46

Chris Gekker: And by the way, this past year, a solo recording of his Sonata No. 2 was released, and so here we are 50 years later, still working closely together. Eric has been on the faculty at Juilliard for many, many years, I was on the faculty for 12 years there, before coming here to Maryland. So, Eric is a very dear friend, and we've been close collaborators over decades. This is a piece that has become one of the most performed sonatas for trumpet piano in the world, and by some accountings, the most performed, but certainly one of top few. It's essentially a piece that is traditional harmonically, but also very modern in many ways. Eric writes for the trumpet in a way that I don't think anyone else has ever done. So, in the second movement, which you won't hear, the trumpet states the melody at the beginning, it's sort of a folk- like melody that has a Scottish snap to it, very beautiful.

And then, the trumpet kind of curves underneath the piano and is a sense accompanying the piano. And this is not a traditional role of the trumpet, the trumpet has always been sort of associated with leadership. Everyone get behind the trumpet and follow, and for the trumpet to act more almost like a viola in a string quartet, and be very supportive of another voice, even another soft voice, this is something that Eric demands in his music, and I think it's very, very important. It's an evolution, and sometimes a very avant- garde piece for trumpet, which may be very striking and groundbreaking in some ways, is ultra- traditional because it's the trumpet sort of blazing the way. And here, Eric, in his own quiet way, speaking in traditional language is actually in very revolutionary in his conception of what the trumpet can do.

00:51:43

John Banther: Eric Ewazen is a composer many of our listeners might not be familiar with, but I'm thinking of something you said earlier, Bach sounds like Bach, and also for me, growing up playing Ewazen's music and all of that, it has a very particular type of sound. And usually you're pretty excited when you are, especially growing up, playing a brass quintet and you see Ewazen put down on your stand.

00:52:30

Chris Gekker: Right. This is a story, this goes back. So, in the early mid- 1980s, I was on the faculty at the Aspen Music Festival for many summers, and one summer met Berio, the Italian composer, and he had written his sequenza for solo trumpet for Tom Stevens, principal trumpet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And I got to know Mr. Berio, and he discussed me perhaps doing a New York premiere of the piece, which I did the next year. And Eric was at the concert, and afterwards we went out with some friends, and they were sitting next to each other and talking, and I said, " Eric, you should write a piece for the American Brass Quintet," a group that I had auditioned for and joined in 1981, and he said, " I'll think about it." Because he had not written a brass quintet. So, the next year, Colchester Fantasy comes out, and that's his first (inaudible) .

00:53:18

John Banther: Oh.

00:53:18

Chris Gekker: And that really led to all his brass writing. He says it himself, that everything sort of came from that same kind of initial venture into brass music. And in the American Brass Quintet, that became a signature piece for us, we recorded it... Scores of times used it as our final piece on recitals. And then he wrote other music for, us and for other people. This trumpet sonata was actually commissioned by the International Trumpet Guild, and Eric and I gave the premiere at the International Trumpet Guild Convention in 1995 in Bloomington, Indiana. And yeah, it was my goal for years to get him to write a second Sonata. These things are not easy, I wanted to raise the funds, and make sure it went... And it took 10 to 12 years to get...

In fact, I was doing recitals in Japan, in 2018, in Tokyo and Kyoto, and Eric's music is loved there. People came from far south, in Kyushu, far north in Hokkaido, to come here. The pianist, who was this wonderful pianist in Tokyo, she is a professor at one of the music schools there, and she knew it by memory, for instance. And that's quite a piano part. So, anyway, we played the first sonata and then we played a couple movements of what was to be his second sonata, and it's kind of interesting, I've talked to Eric about this, it's like it wasn't... It was good, but it's like Eric decided to go back to the drawing board. And so, in 2022, he came out with this second sonata, and it's beautiful.

So, a recording just came out last March, and we've been very fortunate to have some nice reviews and things, and it's exciting. It's a quiet trumpet sonata, literally, the outer movements are slow, and the middle movement's fast, and has some flashy things in it, but it both opens and ends with these very poetic nocturnes for trumpet and piano. And in a sense, Eric was, like some other composers done, he was expressing some of his ideas that had come up through the COVID lockdown, the isolation that all of us felt. And then, a lot of the news in the world today, was taking a sort of a somber look at. And so, it's very, it's a beautiful, it's some of the most beautiful music for trumpet/ piano I've ever heard in my life.

00:55:45

John Banther: And just think about the comparison here, of where our conversation started, you're talking now about a trumpet in this piece, it opens, it's very slow or serene and soft in the opening in the end, we were talking about it used as a military combat weapon, (inaudible) sending a military signal thousands of years know BCE. That is quite a journey, and that's one thing I love about music, and what we do, is that it is an art form that has just traced back thousands of years, and it's still alive. Music's not going anywhere.

00:56:20

Chris Gekker: I think humans have a part of our DNA loves music. And becoming a professional musician is something quite different, that requires a lot of specialized training. But I think every human... I was once backstage with Wynton Marsalis after a concert, and as usual, he always had a huge crowd around him, and this lady was shaking his hand and said how much she loved the music he did, and she said, "Yeah, I don't have any music in me," and Wynton said, " Listen to yourself talk, listen to your senses, all humans have music, it's built in our DNA."

00:56:56

John Banther: Well, there is a question that I love to ask because there's always some great answers, but if you don't have an answer, that's fine, or if you need to change names or countries or places or whatever, feel free. And I'm just wondering what has been maybe your wildest, strangest, interestingest, or just crazy experience on stage?

00:57:18

Chris Gekker: Well, I have an answer ready for you, because I've had this question before. And I've had many, I've joined the union midway through high school, and I've been a member of the union for way over 50 years. So, I have a lot of great memories, a lot of things I can't remember too. So, yeah. Anyway, when I was in the American Brass Quintet, we did a tour of Asia in my second year there, and that involved Japan, and People's Republic of China. And I'm talking, it was a five- week tour, so we were over there a good long time. We were the second Western group to go to the People's Republic of China after the Cultural Revolution. In fact, Dr. Chou Wen- Chung was a professor at Columbia University, gave us these trunks full of music, which were Beethoven string quartets, and Mozart's piano sonatas, and such.

Because during the Cultural Revolution in China much of this music had been destroyed in bonfires and such. Anyway, it was terrific, and the people there were wonderful, and we had the greatest time. We were in Shanghai and playing a concert, and it was in a big hall, there was about 3000 people in attendance, and the lady from the Ministry of Culture told us that there would be close to 9 million people listening on the radio.

00:58:39

John Banther: Wow.

00:58:39

Chris Gekker: Now, the radio had one station. So, anyway, we were playing, we had a thing in there, which was what we called an Americana Suite, which featured music of Stephen Foster, and we started playing A Beautiful Dreamer, which started with a horn solo. And suddenly I was aware, all of us aware of the entire audience singing along very softly in Chinese, and it was first of all, quite beautiful, there's something about 3000 people singing pianissimo or extremely softly that's very ethereal and beautifully done. And after the concert, the lady from the Ministry of Culture said, " Yes, that's a very popular song here, and we have our own words," and such like that.

But I'll never forget, the hair on my neck stood up, and just to be on stage, and you're in this place. And by the way, in those days, China was a different country, there were no Westerners there, there was no skyscrapers, everyone, everyone was wearing Mao jackets. It was just a different country than it has been now for some years. So, it really felt, when we flew there, that we were almost like going to another planet. And many people there had never seen a Westerner before. We would walk in the streets and crowds would follow us because we were so different looking.

00:59:55

John Banther: Right.

00:59:55

Chris Gekker: Anyway, that experience on that stage, hearing that crowd singing, and it's one of those moments when you realize we're sort of all human beings, and how universal music is, and it was very touching. When I think of it today, I still am quite moved by that memory.

01:00:11

John Banther: That's so wonderful. I love that story from you, Chris, and as musicians, when you're on stage, you are so locked into what is happening to the person next to you, and around you, the next line, entrance, et cetera, that when you hear something from an audience, sometimes the first thought is maybe fear, or something's happening, but you get that experience of they're just joining in with you, imagine that had to be, as you described it, just quite ethereal when you hear the slow murmur of Chinese, of the melody you're playing.

01:00:40

Chris Gekker: And of course, the 3000 of them were perfectly in tune. Yeah, that's one where I wish someone had a tape running or something.

01:00:48

John Banther: Oh yeah. Well, thank you so much, Chris, this has been so illuminating, learning all things about the trumpet and hearing you play, and your experiences.

01:00:58

Chris Gekker: Thank you, John, I really am grateful to have been here. Thank you very much.

01:01:05

John Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to classicalbreakdown@ weta. org, and if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review on your podcast app. I'm John Banther, thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.