| At the age of six, before I took my first trumpet lesson, I had already learned to play the bugle calls at the summer camp my dad ran. My parents rented a trumpet for me which I have to this very day over a half century later, a little tarnished with a few dents, but the tone is still so rich and feathery. I began playing scales and tunes with all the wrong fingering, bending and coaxing the music I heard inside, the music I heard all around me, this golden instrument and the sounds of my heart became one. Playing along with the records on the hi-fi in our living room, playing by ear, by feel, mimicking and messing around with the melodies and harmonies that filled the air and my body - this was and continues to be the joy of music in my life. Study, practice and play, it is now over fifty years after I made that first sound out of the trumpet. The freedom of expression has grown, but the feeling of wholesomeness, of pure play, of being enriched by sound, remains what it has always been. |