What is the Jazz Trumpet Project?

The Jazz Trumpet Project is a blog/online shrine dedicated to my one passion in life: jazz trumpet playing. I have designed the blog as an educational tribute to the legacy of this great art form. 

In 2009, I moved to New York City to pursue a job at the Manhattan School of Music. As you know, New York City has been proving ground for jazz musicians since the birth of this music. Specifically, New York has been home to virtually all of greatest trumpet players in jazz history from Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbeck to Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro to Miles Davis and Woody Shaw. It's no different today. Most of the top trumpet players in jazz live in or around this city including Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Ingrid Jensen, and Eddie Henderson among others. 

I realized that my proximity to all of these great players was an amazing opportunity. As a professional jazz trumpet player and educator myself, I decided I would be crazy not to take lessons from as many of these people as possible. Then I thought, "So, why not document my journey in a blog?" The result of this idea is what you see here: The Jazz Trumpet Project. 

Over the course of this blog, I hope to interview and take lessons with some of the world's best jazz trumpet players who currently reside in New York. My goal is very practical: to discover the key factors that make these players successful. I want to weed through the misinformation and myth to find out the common denominators that go into a great jazz trumpet player. For each player, I will as ten questions:

• When did you begin to play trumpet and when did you begin learning jazz?
• What is your practice routine?
• What traits of the great jazz trumpet players of the past do you value the most, and what have you done to address those aspects in your playing?
• What have you tried to do to make your playing unique?
• What equipment do you play and how much does equipment play a factor in your approach?
• Do you subscribe to any particular systems of trumpet technique (Caruso, Reinhardt, etc.)?
• Do you practice classical music, and if so, why?
• Do you play any other instruments? If so, how do you think that impacts your conception of jazz trumpet playing?
• Do you have any particular advice for aspiring jazz trumpet players?
• What do you thing of the jazz scene today? 

But the blog doesn't stop there. I also plan to post my own education videos to anyone interested in listening. You can read more on my viewpoints on education in the "My Teaching Philosophy" link. I will also be hitting the streets visiting important jazz trumpet landmarks and posting reviews of jazz trumpet concerts. Finally, I'll post some album and book reviews as well as a few rants on various related topics.

So I hope you enjoy my posts. I know I enjoy making them. If you have any questions about the site, please let me know. Otherwise, keep swinging!

-Thomas