I have recently finished a piece for the wonderful Jennie Boase, a trumpet player at the Birmingham Conservatoire. The piece is titled Secrets Untold Devour, it’s around 14 minutes long, and is for trumpet, piano and percussion. Jennie commissioned the piece as part of her Major Project, where 4th year students undertake a large project to show their skills in a number of different areas, not just performance or composition.
Jennie’s goal with her Major Project was not just one for the sake of fulfilling an academic requirement: her goal was to get composers to write a varied set of adventurous works that will encourage other trumpet players to work with more than just the available means, which she tells me is as a soloist, sometimes with piano, mostly without, or as various brass ensembles. There is a void of chamber music for trumpet that needs to be filled!
Working with Jennie thus far has been a fantastic experience, she has walked me through the trumpet, and showed me many of the marvellous merits it has. As part of this project Jennie is taking the mammoth task of learning all of these pieces by February 2017 and recording them after. The result will be a CD, and I am so excited to work further with Jennie and for the CD.
I’ll keep you posted!
MG
Max Gibson 