Secrets of Classical Trombonists

Here is the article in from Herald, referred to earlier in this blog, which can now be release for Classical Music Matters readers. It is written by Loel B. Shuler, who attended the festival main concerts with me and helped with the coverage:

Having been down that path myself I know that to become a trombone player is to join a heavily male dominated club. When a young girl is choosing an instrument to be her primary musical focus, the slide trombone is far down the list of possibilities--ahead of the tuba but not much else.

So all the years that I, with thousands of others, have been a fan of the Carmel Bach Festival’s gorgeous Tower Music and its delightful director Suzanne Mudge, I have suspected that there are many fascinating stories connected with her life as a “girl” trombonist. We are a rare breed. And to have carried musicality as far as she has is uncommon for one of us

So I jumped at the opportunity to join Barbara for a sit down conversation with Mudge in a corner of the Sunset Center Lobby. By the way, being in the stillness of that beautiful, spacious milieu with no one else around is a special experience all by itself.

My first question: When, where, how, and why did she decide to take up this unlikely instrument?

“In the fourth grade I played a violin. The violin didn’t seem suit my personality although my Mother recalls the teacher telling her that I had near perfect pitch. I don’t remember what I did in fifth grade. Musical activities in her Laguna Beach elementary school were mostly after-school enrichment.

“In the sixth grade I switched to percussion.,” she says. “In Junior High, seventh and eighth grades, I started out with percussion and then my little circle of friends began talking about different instruments in the band and they decided that girls can’t play trombone, ‘of course not, that’s a boy’s instrument’.

Mudge said that really ruffled her feathers. She describes herself as a tomboy into athletics and sports.

“I had a great arm. I could throw a football as far as any boy,” she says. “`I said ‘of course girls can play trombone.’ I blew them off, went to the band director and asked to play trombone in the band.

“The band director sort of went ‘Oh! Okay!’ My parents didn’t bat an eye. They just went down town to the music store and rented an instrument for $10 a month. I made the switch. And by the eighth grade I was playing in the band.

“And I’m not sure yet if the joke is on them or me.”

That long, strong arm was significant. In order to play a slide trombone one must at a minimum be able to reach 6th and 7th positions. When you think about it, this makes it an impractical instrument for small short-armed people and very young children.

It turns out, however, that once hooked one can find the trombone a versatile, fascinating, and demanding instrument. It’s curious historical origins as a sacred instrument, oddly named “sackbut,”with only a few exceptions kept it out of ensemble and symphonic repertoire until Beethoven introduced it into his 5th symphony.

The trombone section of any symphony orchestra spends a lot of time listening enviously to composers such as Mozart from the warm-up room yearning to join their compatriots even if it only means counting endless measures. The satisfaction of being in the music is addictive, a high to which only musicians are privy.

Even while band playing in high school, Suzanne’s major interest was classical and symphonic music.

“When I started hearing things like Stravinsky, the Bruckner symphonies, the Mahler symphonies this really entranced me,” says Mudge.

She was not keen about the marching band and dropped out until a new director came along with the promise of more and better concert work in exchange for doing the football games, etc.

I wonder if there’s a trombone player anywhere today, in this country at any rate, who didn’t run the gamut of the marching band and the football game. Some of us loved it and some of us didn’t.

Mudge knew some musicians look down on female brass players.

“I always had this feeling that I had to play twice as good to get the job,” she says. “I was never a sensational player, not a prodigy. I was never a star. But I was a good player.”

Her biggest challenge with gender prejudice was in Los Angeles playing with a group called Bones West run by bass trombone player George Roberts.

“He would often bring into rehearsals players who were trombone legends,” she said. “And there were a couple of them who would come in and look at me and say, ‘What are you doing here? You should be home raising a family!’

“I did go through some stuff. One teacher, when I suggested I’d like to conduct, exploded ‘Don’t even think about it. Women will never be conductors!”

Today along with performing in numerous groups and teaching privately, Mudge also teaches beginning band in two elementary schools.

“As a teacher I have to be careful who plays trombone because if you don’t have a really fine ear it’s not going to be a good experience for anyone.,” she says. “With most instruments you strike or press the right combination of keys or valves and out pops the note. With the trombone you have to be able to hear the note to be and then put the slide pretty close to pitch.”

It can be nerve-wracking in an orchestra to sit through long stretches sometimes whole movements and then come in on cue, unwarmed –up, with a soft and beautifully toned perfect sound.

“It’s scary!” Mudge observes.

About teaching beginners she says, “I had to learn really fast how to teach all the instruments. Flutes, reeds, brass players I’m pretty comfortable with because I’ve grown up with them, but the woodwinds I‘ve had to work at.

“I always pooh-poohed teaching when I was younger. But, you know? Teaching rocks! It’s cool. I can’t imagine not teaching anymore. I love working with kids.”

Once they graduate from band to orchestra trombone players have to learn to play in tenor and even alto clefs as well as bass. And for their own edification they usually add treble.

“In graduate school” says Mudge, “I had a good friend who was a horn player. She was playing some really cool etudes and I wanted to play them myself. So I went into a practice room with her and learned how to transpose them.”

This is what a trombone player with a strong classical bent does. To play the wonderful music written for other instruments, you must adapt the score. This quickly becomes a passion. You might call it the secret life of a classical trombonist.

It’s this passion that brought Mudge to the Carmel Bach Festival during the tenure of beloved former music director and conductor Sandor Salgo almost a quarter of a century ago.

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Barbara Rose Shuler writes Intermezzo, which chronicles classical music, in the Monterey Herald's Go! Magazine each week. She can be contacted at wordways@comcast.net.
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