by Marty Schlenker
Dear Fellow Ambitious Amateurs,
This month, I tackle a topic that affects us all: organization.
I am a member of the “players just wanna play” crowd. If I had all the time in the world, I’d have horn-to-face each day until I couldn’t stand it, anywhere, with anybody—like a songbird in a tree, regardless of the technical and interpretive limitations. I know that I am much like my fellow amateur readers of Horn and More. Horn is more than just this thing I do on Monday nights when I go to community band.
Those of us in the “players just wanna play” school, of course, owe a debt of gratitude to those from the “let’s get organized” school. If we are to walk in, get our horns out, and sit down to a stand of music, a member of the “let’s get organized” school will already have been on the job.
I am fortunate to be in the company of such people as a member of Brass Triumphant. Brass Triumphant is remarkable in its longevity for an amateur group, active continuously since 1985. The founding members (trumpeters Becky Speck and Mike Stahl—who continue to lead the group—plus horn, trombone, and piano) were brought together as pit musicians for passion plays put on by the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) chapter of Youth for Christ. When the organization chose to dispense with a live pit, the players had to find other outlets for performance.
Members of four different churches, the players had the advantage of being able to take repertoire “on the road,” and steady participation in church worship services followed. Performances at retirement centers, weddings, and other events came, too. A big motivator to staying organized is having those performance dates on the calendar. Nearly all dates have come via members’ personal connections, but we’ve had business cards since the 1990s and a website for 7 or 8 years.
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Brass Triumphant at a summer church service on a well-known riverboat in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
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Instrumentation is currently a well-balanced 4 trumpets, 2 horns, 3 trombones, and tuba, but it has varied over the years. Brass Triumphant could fit into members’ basements for rehearsals when the group was smaller, but we now rehearse in the showroom of Mike’s commercial flooring business on Saturday mornings at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Organizational advantages include a sufficiently spacious and reliably available rehearsal site, and a consistent time slot.
The group was fortunate to add trumpeter and arranger Dave Rutman in the early 1990s. He has adapted dozens of pieces to whatever the instrumentation has been at the time. Dave is modest about his arranging skills, but he has Finale software, a can-do attitude, and a sense of humor that can surprise you.
His most common adaptations are to insert additional trombone lines into brass quintets (which trombonist Jeff Schwartz will also do, ad lib) and to simplify unnecessarily challenging lines for the benefit of players and listeners alike. Dave states, “If I can mess with it before it gets passed out, no one feels like they’ve had notes taken away.” In 39 years, Brass Triumphant has assembled a library of close to 200 selections, much of which has been scanned for space efficiency and to reduce the risk of a lost folder; this is another investment of time that continues to yield organizational benefits.
Being the least-tenured member of the group, I was introduced to its history over a post-rehearsal breakfast, and one of the things that struck me was the matter-of-fact way in which the ensemble’s well-oiled functioning is organized. Things that are intimidating to many, especially for players new to self-promotion, are routine here. Want people to play with? Go find them! Want gigs? Cultivate them! Want to be asked back? Set clear expectations and come prepared. You don’t have to be virtuosos, but being organized surely helps.
And for anyone still paying attention to how my re-started lessons are going…uh…I am still far from practicing the organization that I preach. I returned last week from three weeks away from Pennsylvania, during which I was only able to practice a couple of times. I’m not back at square one but the irregularity sure isn’t helping. The good news is that the coming month will be much more settled. Check back!
And as always, please get in touch and share your stories! marty.schlenker@cavaliers.org
Marty Schlenker, Amateur Hornist
