Posted on 10/16/2006 5:51:15 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
He may be a god of the trombone, but most of the time, Charlie Vernon is just another figure in black tie, laboring in obscurity at the back of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Yet on this particular night in Orchestra Hall, he stood in front, pumping his fists, waving at the audience and bathing in its adulation.
Mr. Vernon, the bass trombonist in the orchestra’s legendary brass section, had just finished playing a tour-de-force concerto written expressly for him. This was its premiere run of concerts.
Backstage, scores of students, their teachers and fellow professionals from as far away as Boston, New York and New Mexico came to pay homage. Mr. Vernon signed autographs for 45 minutes: for one late September night, he was the Elvis of the brass set. “This is awesome,” said Mat Anderson, 19, a trombone student from the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, almost quivering with excitement.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Music ping.
Let Sitetest know if you want on or off this classical music ping list.
This is a pleasant thing to be able to read this morning. Thanks.
Trombone players rule. You develop a good ear playing the trombone.
Richard Strauss is supposed to have advised conductors: "Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them."
Bass trombone? I played baritone, and I have never heard of more than one kind of trombone. Did I miss something?
or is this a mistake by the author? Can I go out and get a tenor trombone?
I will Google but IIRC there is a bass trombone - it includes extra tubing length at the rear of the instrument.
Thanks for the ping!
"Bass trombone? I played baritone, and I have never heard of more than one kind of trombone. Did I miss something?"
Must have. My son played a bass trombone in High School, so it must not be all that uncommon. (He has a standard trombone that he practices on, but switched to the bass trombone to help give his band more depth. (All of the tubas ended up on probation.) He stayed with it because he liked the lower range.
According to this chart, the trombone is the loudest instrument in an orchestra. I've heard that the bass trombone can even be louder than a regular trombone. You don't want to be sitting in front of one when it really cuts loose. More and more, you see clear noise shields between the brass section and the rest of the orchestra because the decibel levels generated by a brass section can exceed OSHA standards and for obvious reasons, it's not possible for orchestra players to wear ear protection.
Musical Noise
normal piano practice 60-70 dB
fortissimo singer 3 ft. away 70 dB
chamber music in small auditorium 75-85 dB
regular sustained exposure may cause permanent damage 90-95 dB
piano fortissimo 92-95 dB
violin 84-103 dB
cello 82-92 dB
oboe 90-94 dB
flute 85-111 dB
piccolo 95-112 dB
clarinet 92-103 dB
french horn 90-106 dB
trombone 85-114 dB
timpani & bass drum rolls 106 dB
average Walkman on 5/10 setting 94 dB
symphonic music peak 120-137 dB
amplified rock music at 4-6 ft. 120 dB
rock music peak 150 dB
Thanks for the info! I learn something new every day! ;-P
You can go out and get a tenor trombone.
http://www.getzen.com/trombone/customtenor/
Trombone is among the first fully chromatic (able to play "half-step" notes)brass instrument without the use of valves.
By changing the overall length of the instrument, the player can move through multiple harmonic 'stacks' to play all the notes available to the instrument's range.
The base trombone uses one or two (usually rotary) valves to add additional and lower harmonic stacks.
The trombone, like the violin can be played perfectly in tune due to the variable nature of note selection (the slide).
Cheers
See: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~backstrom/trombone.html
prego,
Ed
Interesting t-bone article.
I've actually MET this guy. Here's the story.
A few years back I was parking my car in the lot of New Trier West High School (Northfield, IL), and saw this other car pulling out of the lot with the IL license plate - it was a vanity plate - "POSAUNE".
For some strange reason, I had filed this little piece of information in the back of my memory, that my dad had told me. My father studied Applied Trombone at Northwestern Univ. and had played several Wagnerian operas where the Trombone part is labelled in the German word for it: "Posaune". How to Pronounce "Posaune".
So........ when I saw this car with this license plate, I made a trombone slide motion (a la 76 Trombones), and the driver nodded, then stopped and rolled down his window. We proceeded to have a conversation in which I introduced myself and told him the story of why I knew the word on his license plate (very few people in this part of the world do, you know ;-). He then told me he played Bass Trombone for the Chicago Symphony. Being the musician I am, my eyes got big, of course, and I said I'd seen the CSO at least once a year in concert going back to my teenage years when they would tour around and come through the downstate Illinois university towns and play concerts at Univ. of Illinois (where I went to music school) and Ill. State Univ. (where my sister went to music school). It was a very big deal to this downstater-by-birth to see the World's Greatest Orchestra under the baton of Sir Georg Solti back then.
The world, especially the music one, is very small indeed.
Mr. Vernon apparently lives in the next suburb over and I occasionally see him driving around the area from time to time. I spot him easily in that Volvo station wagon (gotta have the right vehicle to regularly haul around trombones! ;-) "labelled" with that license plate. :-)
See my post directly above.
See my post above.
See my post above.
It was also called the "sackbut." Brass instruments with slides predate brass instruments with valves.
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