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Track Information
Each of the songs on this E.P. has a story, some more exciting than others. Click here if you are interested in reading those stories. (coming soon)
There are 44 tracks on this album. If you purchase the album outright, that’s just 23 cents per track. That’s a huge savings compared to the $43 you would spend if you bought each track individually.
Album Thank You’s
Even though this is a home grown project with very few direct contributions from outside my family, there are plenty of indirect contributors who we feel are worth recognizing. Click here to read more about the people who have made a difference in the developing of this project.
Trumpet Quasi Master Digital Music Album
I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo, an example of nature and nurture run amok. Yes, I am a hard core introvert, but there’s much more to my being an oddity than just a simple personality trait. Other things contribute to how strange I am, things like my hearing loss and the fact that I never lived in any one place as a child long enough to become socialized in any one culture. But the one thing that I believe makes me stand out as something very different from the rest of the world is my faith. The Bible says we are to be “set apart”, and to be different from the world we live in. You see, I am not an odd ball walking in parallel with the rest of the world. No, with each passing day I become increasingly more at odds with the world I live in.
Is it a wonder, then, that my music should be something entirely different? I have always believed that our music should be an honest expression of who we are. I do not believe in being original for originality’s sake. Our originality comes from being true to who we are. And if who I am is someone completely different from the rest of the music industry, then yes, my music is going to be very original. But it is also honest. I am not trying to be someone I am not. I am not ashamed of who I have become. And my music has become a genuine expression of my uniqueness.
Trumpets of Jubilee
Quasi Classical
So it really should be no surprise that a classical trumpet superstar would tell me that my music is not classical. After a private lesson with a trumpet player who I greatly admire, he told me that my music is only “quasi classical“. Looking back at his comment today, about twenty years later, I couldn’t agree more!
This music album, Trumpet Quasi Master, while it does fall into the classical genre better than any other genre, breaks from certain norms associated with that style. This is true for my compositions and even more so for my own performance of those compositions. My work is clearly classical in nature, but for those who are intimately acquainted with today’s classical scene, I sort of get it all wrong.
I do so boldly and without apology! The music in this album is an honest and genuine expression of who I am as a musician.
The Long Road Here
The idea to make this album hit me years ago, even before I started working on the Vintage Trumpet Treasures CD. This is a much bigger project than the VTT CD was. When you add up all of the individual trumpet parts, there were well over a hundred individual tracks to record, and that’s only for the tracks that made the cut! Since I recorded all of the tracks myself, the Trumpet Quasi Master project represents a huge time investment.
You can say the same for the compositions. Trumpets of Jubilee took me longer to compose than all the rest of them (about seven years), but each one of these compositions represents a significant number of hours invested. For the ensembles, composition time can range anywhere from a few weeks to a couple years. For example, Four Parables took almost two full years to complete.
Part of the reason it took so long to complete this project is because I always put the work I do for other people first. In the years since I first began working on the Trumpet Quasi Master album, I have written literally hundreds of compositions and arrangements for other people. It’s part of what I do for a living. The same is true for the number of recordings I’ve done for other people during that time. I always put other people’s work first.
I’m a firm believer in serving others before I do my own thing. Yes, it’s true that I derive more pleasure from working on my own projects. But that pleasure would be pointless if I were not serving the people who God has placed in my life. How can this music be an expression of who I am if who I am is all about the music? No, I will not live a recursive, musical lifestyle. I serve others first so that I have something meaningful to say when I’m creating my own music.
If I Ask Nicely? 🙂
I have a very difficult time asking people for their support, but the truth is, no one can survive in the music business without it. If people only knew that when they purchase a CD, EP or digital single, it counts for more than just a single purchase, then I truly believe they would buy more recordings of the artists they like.
In this digital age, buying music is more powerful than voting for your favorite American Idol contestant. Every purchase counts towards that artist’s ranking and higher rankings turns into higher sales.
So it’s important to me that my friends actually buy the album. I appreciate your prayers, your well wishes and your kind words of encouragement. Thank you. But the ten dollars it takes to purchase this album (either on CD Baby, or Amazon.com or at Apple’s iTunes) is worth far more than ten dollars to me.
By Purchasing this digital album, you are casting a powerful vote for my music and playing an important part in its success.
Sheet Music for Sale
If you are interested in practicing or performing any of the music from this project, most of it is available at our online music store: http://www.TigerMusicStore.com. Most of these compositions were originally written to be performed by other people, students, friends and colleagues of mine. So they are available. Anything that you don’t find on the website, please let me know and I make sure you have a way to get it.
