I've played on the same mouthpiece since I was in high school - my teacher handed me an old Conn Helleberg style mouthpiece when I was 16, and with the exception of a few brief periods of experimentation, I have not strayed far away from that. I'm always amused at my trumpet playing friends who seem to endlessly quibble over leadpipes, heavy valve caps, bell weight, and modified mouthpieces. Apparently, this has always been the case. Here is the quick and breezy primer to the

A while back, I wrote an entry called 4 Dimensional Texture where I identified 4 basic ways to group instruments in a large ensemble.

I usually have three or four arranging projects on the front burners and many more unfinished projects in my "work in progress" file. Maybe because last summer I had just told the world that I don't like to transcribe orchestral music, thus suggesting to myself that I can't or shouldn't do that, I suddenly got interested in some big orchestral transcription projects. At the time, I was also preparing my friend Jeremy Van Hoy's fantastic Wagner Ring Cycle synopsis for publicat