Bach: Three Part Sinfonias & Two Part Inventions
This is really a love story that started back when I was too young to even know what a major scale was. I didn’t know who Johann Sebastian Bach was, or what counterpoint was, but there was this music I would hear as a child that always intrigued me. There was something about the how the different voices would interact with each other that I found hypnotic. It was like the instruments were speaking to each other. When I was a little older and started to play the trumpet, I remember being especially drawn to a Canadian Brass arrangement of this one piece by J.S. Bach (Fugue in G minor, BWV 578). I would practice one of the trumpet parts repeatedly, even though I never had the chance to perform that piece with a brass quintet (my high school didn’t have a brass quintet, or any other brass players willing to learn that music).
I wasn’t raised in a musical family, so I didn’t have any classical recordings around the house, and we didn’t have that much money, so I couldn’t go out and buy a tonne of new tapes or CDs (I grew up before streaming services like Apple Music existed and even before the iTunes Store). So it wasn’t until I started studying at the Manhattan School of Music and had easy access to the school’s library that I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the music of J.S. Bach. There was a box set at the library: “Bach 2000”, that was a compilation of every single known composition of his. I think it took me a few months to listen to all of those tracks.
Years later, after I’d moved back home to Canada, while I was ramping up my practice schedule again, I injured my lip from over-practicing. This had been a common occurrence for me, and it was always extremely frustrating, not just because I would have to take a break from practicing to heal, but also because I felt like this limit of physical endurance was holding me back from being able to do the extra work that I wanted to do. I was at a crossroads as a musician and decided that I had to finally try changing my embouchure (the setup of my lips for playing trumpet) to see if that would permanently fix the problem, or just give up and find another career.
I had been playing on a “dry” embouchure since I started playing the trumpet, and now, after more than 20 years, I was going to try to switch to a “wet” embouchure. It’s hard to explain how drastic this change was for me to people who don’t play the trumpet, but imagine a Major League Baseball player changing from batting/throwing left-handed to batting/throwing right-handed in the middle of their MLB career.
For six weeks I didn’t even let my lips touch a trumpet mouthpiece. I needed to forget how the old embouchure felt so I could start building a new one. I didn’t want my musical mind (or sanity) to waste away, so during those six weeks, I started singing scales and arpeggios with solfeggio syllables (do re mi, etc) whenever I was driving around doing errands. Those six weeks away from the trumpet were rough for me, but singing those scales and arpeggios was surprisingly therapeutic.
When I finally started to try playing with the new wet embouchure at the end of those six weeks, I was shocked that I hadn’t lost any of my upper register on the trumpet. As I adjusted to the new embouchure over the next few months, my upper register and endurance skyrocketed. I could essentially play up to the top of the piano keyboard on trumpet now (some of you might remember some of those silly high note videos I posted on Facebook in 2016). I even rented a trombone for a month for fun, because I was almost “bored” after finally conquering these old limitations of mine on trumpet after so many years and had a brief case of “what now?” before A Canadian Christmas took over my musical life for a few years.
In 2016, I embarked on a more thorough exploration of Bach’s four part chorales, singing through every voice of all 371 chorales in the Breitkopf & Härtel 371 Vierstimmige Choralgesänge book that so many post-secondary music programs use for ear training. This project was one of the most transformative weeks of my musical life.
Almost suddenly, in what felt like a magical transformation after only a week of singing those chorale parts, I could hear structure in atonal music that I could never hear before. Writing counterpoint suddenly felt almost effortless to me. Singing through these chorales is what taught me how to enjoy singing, and is what lead me to start writing more vocal music over the following years. I had learned orchestration from a great teacher in NYC (thank you Dr. Paul Allen Levi!), but learning counterpoint through this study of Bach’s compositions finally completed the skillset I needed to be the composer I’d always dreamed of being. This new love of singing also gave me the abilities I needed to be the trumpet player I’d always dreamed of being. It’s also how I was able to learn euphonium, french horn, and tuba so quickly. For the first time in my life, I felt no limits to what I could create musically with enough time.
Fast forward another few years, and thanks to some awesome fans of my music (and one specific one, you know who you are ❤️🙏🏾) actually buying my recordings instead of just streaming them, I was able to purchase a euphonium (instead of just renting a euphonium) to record my Mozart Divertimenti album.
Shortly after I bought that euphonium in 2022, I started playing through the left hand parts of J.S. Bach’s Two Part Inventions. When I searched for the legendary Glenn Gould’s recordings of those 15 short masterpieces, I was quickly reminded of Bach’s Three Part Sinfonias on that same album. I played through the left hand parts for those other 15 short masterpieces and realized all 30 pieces could be adapted for trumpet and euphonium. I could finally record enough music by J.S. Bach to release a full album of his music, and I didn’t have to wait until I had the money saved up to hire other musicians or a recording studio to do it. This would all take some practice to get everything up to speed, but I could learn, perform, and record this incredible music at home. So, I got to work.
There was a moment this past January, when I realised that the my main obstacle to recording this album was my euphonium’s valves requiring much more force to move than a trumpet’s valves. (If you’re not a musician, and/or didn’t know this, faster passages are much harder to play and much more tiring to practice on euphonium) Practicing some of these euphonium parts was the first time I’ve ever experienced my fingers and forearms getting tired from practicing music before my lips did.
In early February, I was so frustrated by these difficulties, that I thought about delaying this recording and coming back to it after another project.
Over the next few weeks, as I was working on an unrelated [but huge] project with a lot of other people, something clicked in me to give me that extra gear I needed to get my motivation back, and I started to power through those euphonium parts. I was practicing so much, that I had to stop doing pull-ups or any other bicep work at the gym, because my right arm couldn’t handle that on top of practicing euphonium every day. (There wasn’t enough time for the tendons and muscles to rest and recover when I was practicing euphonium every day).
As I finally started recording the individual tracks and finally heard all three parts together in my early mixes at home, I realised I was trying to make a classical trumpet album that I would’ve listened to on repeat in my youth, and that will probably be what I’m chasing with every classical trumpet recording I make for the rest of my life as a musician. It took a couple years to learn and record these all 75 of those parts and work them up to performance tempo. I remember those days when I would play through all of those 75 parts every day and be amazed that I still loved those compositions at the end of the those 6–7 hour practice days, even though I was physically and mentally exhausted. I’m also 99% sure this is the first time anyone has ever released a recording of all 30 of these Bach compositions on these instruments, playing all the parts on these instruments.
As I look at my daily practice schedule, after my warmup, on many days, most of the music I practice is by J.S. Bach. I learned how to write counterpoint by singing and studying the music of J.S. Bach. I finally have the ability to compose or arrange anything I want to, and that is mostly because I studied the example of J.S. Bach. Even the Jazz that I loved most as a kid sounded most like lines that Bach might compose. There is just something magical yet so profoundly rational about the music of Bach that speaks to me in ways that nothing else does. He has been like a mentor to me, sending musical wisdom from the distant past.
I can’t end this without thanking the always awesome Marc Koecher for taking these trumpet and euphonium tracks I recorded at home and working his mixing magic to make them sound more like someone recorded this album in a concert hall.
It has been a challenge working on this album (mostly in secret) for the last couple years, but in retrospect, I’m glad I had more time with this music to let it become part of me, and I’m so thrilled to finally share this recording with all of you today.
