TromboneChat

I saw something on facebook the other day about how there is a trend of moving away from the standards and playing more non trombone music. Is this really something that's new and do you think all the new pieces of music for trombone will offset this phenomena?
I'd love to hear thoughts on this

We've always done this. Cello, flute, bassoon, vocal, a lot of music is very performable on bone. Honestly, I prefer to play arrangements of existing stuff (written for some other instrument) than brand new music for trombone. New music is fun the first time, but it's rare to hear stuff a second time and enjoy it. Steven VerHelst has to be an exception, I like almost all the original stuff I've heard from him.

A lot of music gets written. Very little of it lasts more than a few years.

Want to listen to some wonderful non-trombone music played by a great trombonist?



[Originally published for Oboe & Piano!]

JCBone wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:42 pm I saw something on facebook the other day about how there is a trend of moving away from the standards and playing more non trombone music. Is this really something that's new and do you think all the new pieces of music for trombone will offset this phenomena?
I'd love to hear thoughts on this

A lot of the standards are....non-trombone music transcribed for trombone!

So definitely not new.

Not new. How many times have I seen a Telemann concerto "for trombone"? Such a piece never was written, but doesn't stop it from getting performed.

Stars and Stripes Forever - Bones Apart
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - trombone quartet. One version -

I do vocal repertoire on recitals all the time. I've done some of the standard Schubert and Brahms songs, but I really enjoy branching out and finding vocal stuff by composers off of the beaten path to work on. There are so many art songs out there, it can be really fun to just poke around on IMSLP and find stuff I've never heard of.

Plenty of us on bass trombone adapt tuba repertoire- I've done the Vaughan William's concerto, the John Williams concerto, the Gregson, all of the Lebedev stuff, the Hindemith Tuba Sonata, plus I've also done the Hindemith Alto Horn sonata on bass trombone (highly recommended! It's very cool).

We're not the only instrument that does this, either. Players of pretty much every instrument have adapted the Bach cello suites, the violin suites and partitas- some of the bigger organ works have been arranged or orchestrated for large ensembles.

I don't know that this will have any effect on new music being written for us, either. There will always people out there writing new material for us to work on, and always people who are interested in playing it. On the other hand, I strongly believe that it's important for anyone studying music to be a knowledgeable performer in music from a wide range of styles and eras. For trombone players, in many cases this is going to mean adapting and transcribing music originally written for other instruments.

What was the Facebook post referring to as standards?

Vegasbound wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:07 pm What was the Facebook post referring to as standards?

Korsokov, David, Marceu etc.