School of Music
Amount Awarded: $7,000
Awarded for 2018-19
Title: The Trumpet Repertoire Project
This project will create works that reflect the compositional voice and style of modern American composers and to bring these works, as well as their composers, to the University of Utah. University faculty is engaged to perform these works at the International Trumpet Guild Conference, thus expanding the limited corpus of repertoire for trumpet and piano to a global audience; they will also be presented by University of Utah students at the National Trumpet Competition.
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This project’s primary goal was to create four sonata-style works for trumpet and piano that showcased the compositional voices of young American composers. Each work was pedagogically designed to refine elements of performance and collaboration for young performers. These works included various attributes in the compositions that allowed players to refine both their technical and lyrical skills as performers in a solo and collaborative setting.
The pieces were fully completed in mid-December of 2018 with the exception of two which were completed in August of 2018. I was able to present these works in recitals at universities and events at various locations throughout the United States this past year. Several notable performances include the premiere of Nicole Piunno’s Sonata for Trumpet and Piano at Newberry College in Newberry, S.C. in September (2018), and Daniel Baldwin’s Under the Same Skies at a week-long residency at the University of North Texas College of Music in November (2018). I will be presenting the Piunno Sonata at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Miami, Florida in July (2019) at their New Works Recital, thus giving the first international premiere of any work from this project. The works by Temkin and Owen are tentatively slated to be performed at the 2020 International Trumpet Guild Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Several trumpet students have begun working on these pieces for their own performances this coming year, and Dr. Viktor Valkov (Assistant Professor of Piano, University of Utah) has introduced many of these compositions in the curriculum of his Collaborative Piano Class this past Spring. This class allows piano and trumpet students to be coached through the collaborative process by Dr. Valkov which further enhances the collective musical product created by both young performers in these new works.
This coming semester the University of Utah Trumpet Studio is already scheduled to have several of the project’s composers provide live-feedback and clinics on their works via video-conferencing during our studio performance class. This will allow students to work with the piece’s corresponding composer to better understand their musical objectives and refine their performance to better suit the original compositional intention. Members from our School of Music’s composition studios will also be joining us so they may see this collaboration workshop, and ask questions regarding the composer’s compositional process.
In 2020, Dr. Valkov and I plan to record these and numerous other works for an international release. This will allow these new works to be presented in a fashion that will promote opportunity for students to embrace these new works as part of the standard performance repertoire. Additionally, these recordings will provide aural examples for ways in which to approach these new 21st century compositions.