I'm really digging this. Great trombone sound, great group sound, great feel and great dog.

So... yeah.

I had the opportunity to meet Wycliffe at a concert he performed with the Bob Haggart Big Band in Vero Beach, Florida about 10 years ago now.

Before the concert and during the break, he had no problem with a hack trombonist like myself coming up and talking to him, while he doodled around with a plunger in the green room.

Nicest guy you could hope to meet, and among the finest trombonists to whom you could hope to listen.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Conn-88h-Trombone-with-Removable-Sterling-Silver-Bell-and-Thayer-Valve-/330725434923?pt=Brass_Instruments&hash=item4d00c5a62b

Very nice horn, extremely open through the lower range. I played this at my big band rehearsal this past Monday as my Getzen's F-trigger broke off (the owner played my Getzen bass as a straight horn).

Interesting sound, very broad and symphonic.

Hopefully we can get some more information on its provenance, as a forum member apparently did the work on the valve. I'll try contacting him to get more info.

Given Courtois's involvement in this thing, I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't invite Weston Sprott.

Don't you mean you're glad that you didn't sell your Shires tuning slide?

Nothing But Trouble or Death to Smoochy.

Both very underappreciated dark comedies.

As long as your father didn't moonlight as a mohel, I wouldn't be too concerned.

(My guess would be to remove bark from trees/logs. That looks like a pretty heavy hatchet to be used for non-woody plants.)

So I'm playing a concert of the music of Thad Jones tonight, and I'm listening to some recordings on Spotify. I'm really digging the bass trombone sound, and some research told me that it's Cliff Heather.

http://open.spotify.com/track/1ARBxquSORDZ8ugxbeCz9Y

I'm interested- tell me about the dude, his education, his career, his equipment- whatever.

Same way you pace yourself for any piece. Play softly when you don't need to play loud and take the horn off your face whenever you can.

It's really not that different than any 5 minute trombone solo.

Bones:
Curtis Fuller
Urbie Green
Alex Iles
Alan Raph

Trumpets: who cares

Rhythm:
Drums- Buddy Rich
Bass- Rufus Reid
Piano- Brad Mehldau

Saxes:
Tenor 1: Michael Brecker
Tenor 2: Bob Mintzer
Bari: Ronnie Cuber
Altos- who cares.

The most successful trombonist with whom I have any sort of real association is a woman. Jazz player named Sara Jacovino, had the same high school trombone teacher I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AuhZVTSaf0&feature=relmfu&t=4m0s her solo starts just after the time listed.

I also often play with an extremely fine female bass trombonist.

Karna Millen of the USCG band is amazing (I'll admit I haven't played with her, but I've heard her play, and played with her husband, an amazingly good trombonist in his own right, who says that SHE's the player, he's the teacher).

It's always possible that they offered solo spots to some of the heavy hitters (Lisa Albrecht, Anna Lindvall, Astri Ellann) but they declined due to time constraints/family obligations. There's no need to assume foul play until Megumi Kanda or someone of similar stature says "I offered to play there, but I was turned down".

The dual-bore rotor is something pretty special, maybe even more special than the Trubore is. It feels like a standard rotor through the straight side (OK, the trubore feels more like a straight horn, but coming off, say, an 88H or 42B, you might feel more at home with the dual-bore rotor) while also being quite open and natural feeling on the F side. It also feels more like the straight horn than the standard rotor on the open side? It's hard to describe. The valve side is glorious though it doesn't feel as much the same on the valve and F sides as a Thayer or even a Trubore.

I couldn't make a decision on whether I preferred it to my Trubore quickly, in fact, it would probably take me several visits each lasting a couple hours to make the decision, but it's definitely a real option, and responds extremely nicely, quickly and clearly.

I take it that the gimmick is that the outgoing ports are a larger bore than the incoming ports, which makes for that part of the gooseneck (including through the valve side) being somewhat more conical than it would be in a standard rotor.

Something very special, and definitely an option to try out. I imagine the bass sections getting some real support once they come into true production. The setup I tried there with rotors (7YLW bell, indy dual-bore rotors, seamed red tuning slide, and B62 slide) was a joy to play.

The new 8HTs are different than the older 8Hs in a number of ways that would lead you to need to play them differently.

The biggest one to start with- Elkhart 8Hs have an unsoldered rim on the bell which affects how articulations are formed. You can get the same *ping* that your newer Conn has, you just have to start the notes differently and perhaps more precisely.

The second biggest one is probably the thickness of the nickel in the various braces and grips. A 58 year old 88H had more pristine handgribs and braces than did my 10 year old 88HO. The 58 year old horn felt, more than anything else, "solid" in a way that you only really find in boutique brands today (like my current Shires). That also probably affects the resonance to some degree, but also requires that you play it for a while to get used to it.

A 5 minute side-by-side between horns that are quite different isn't quite enough to determine which is better, sadly, and you can't trust your own ears to tell you what the horn's actually doing at the bell end (Short story is that sound moves faster through the metal than it does through the air and so most of the sound you "hear" when playing the horn is actually felt).

Play the Elkhart 8H for a week, then go back to your newer 8H, and then you can comment on how much "ring" or "life" the sound has... after you've learned to play it like it wants to be played.

If it's anything like the All New England process here in the northeast, they're judging you the same way that all state judges do- they're trying to get an idea of your musicality, technicality, breath control, intonation, flexibility, range... etc all in the course of a 5 minute audition.

The one thing that I will mention is that the prepared pieces seem to be slightly less 'ambitious' than would be all-state or all-northwest audition pieces. That Handel "Allegro in Cm" played well would do you a lot more favors than would Saint-Saens "Cavatine" played poorly, but the former stays within a two octave F scale, so your intonation/flexibility above the staff (where a lot of high school band music puts the first bone) remains unclear. So, if you'd had a superb high range, the Handel wouldn't be the piece you should choose to best present yourself for the judges.

Why don't you tell us what your all-state audition piece will be?

I said this the last time we discussed this, but I'd put the Grondahl up against any of those pieces, if they'd give a trombonist half a chance.

Unfortunately, you have a point with regard to the majority of our repertoire being a bit on the... odd... side.

Take Bourgeois for example, nice piece, well written. But then you get to mvt 3 and all of a sudden it's "HEY GUYS LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!!1". Larsson does the same thing.

On the other hand, it'd take 80 years for a piece written today to be acceptable for the Pittsburgh Symphony's concert, so... moot point?

I'm wondering if perhaps the 42B is far enough away from the other mouthpieces you use at 22.99mm (big honking 28.5mm bass mouthpiece, 25.9mm large tenor mouthpiece) to allow you to find a third "groove" in your trombone chops for the sake of playing lead and alto stuff.

I've found my tenor chops are less affected on my 25.9mm mouthpiece when using the 28.2mm Griego mouthpiece instead of the 27.1mm Hammond

I believe that Dave Wilken lives in Asheville. He may not watch this place constantly though, so maybe contact him through his website wilktone.com or through Facebook.

Jaeger Brass in South Salem, NY has an ultrasonic cleaner, but you'd have to ship it. Maybe wait for the summer?
http://jaegerbrass.com/jaeger/Home.html

From what I've noticed while playing combos at Shires and Dillon, how the rim wire is attached to the flare (soldered or unsoldered) makes a bigger difference than what alloy the bell is.

And it's still not a matter of "better" or "worse", even then- it's all dependent on the horn and yourself. I love the red-brass unsoldered bell on my current tenor, but on a Getzen 3047AF, I *greatly* preferred the yellow brass, soldered-rim bell to the red-brass unsoldered bell.

If your valve is bad, you might not get as much for it as you might be hoping.