This piece is one in a series of works for trumpet ensemble conceived and composed in the last year or so. With less in-person musical collaboration going on, I decided to write some works for me, myself, and I. The results vary widely but all center on the same question:

What can you do with multiple trumpets that you can't do with one?

Some answers are obvious: play chords, for example. This piece employs chords at points but is more concerned with another, perhaps less obvious answer (at least for non-trumpeters): complex lines with large leaps and little time to breathe. Some instruments can do this with relative ease—trumpet is certainly not one of them.

Where one trumpet simply cannot perform this material, four trumpets in a hocketing pattern can do the job—hence the title "Hyper-Hocket." While this was the initial idea for the piece, I'd like to think that the music took on a life of its own at some point and became more than an experiment in trumpet texture. Listen for yourself to find out.

Enjoy!

Trumpets 1-4: Me

Mixing/Mastering: Rain Johannes (IG: @rainjohannes)

Hyper-Hocket

Recorded by the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra on November 9, 2022; conducted by Alan Kay. Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University. Soli Deo Gloria.

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Program Notes:

To plod is "to move or walk heavily or laboriously" or "to work or act perseveringly or monotonously." In any kind of art, it's tempting to wait until inspiration strikes before we get to work, but for most of us, this would mean that we accomplish little at all. Most days, we need to get up, keep our noses to the grindstone, and hope something happens that's worth keeping. This piece is a meditation on the commitment to plod along in whatever work we have in front of us. One step at a time, often a laborious step, is all we can do, but we must persevere in the pursuit of beauty.

The Open Road - Live at Tribeca New Music Festival (JACK Quartet) (2009)

DavidCrowell

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