The Brass Junkies Episode 182: Jeffrey Curnow

Jeff Curnow is a legend!

I have looked up to him since my very first Empire Brass concert in August of 1988.

Jeff was one of the five people who changed my life forever that afternoon and it’s crazy to me that we are now friends and colleagues. The music business is funny that way!

We got some Empire Brass stories I hadn’t heard before (and I’ve heard A LOT of them so I always get excited for new ones!)

And Jeff spoke so highly of Sam Pilafian. It is obvious how much of an impact Sam had on his life and career.

Pretty crazy that I get interview people who were on posters on my wall as a kid but here we are!

You can watch the episode on YouTube below or head over to Pedal Note Media for all of the links to where to find it.

Enjoy!

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On This Episode of The Brass Junkies:

• How proud the three of us are for figuring out how to get on the same Zoom call

• How playing in a full-time touring quintet is basically like living together and can feel like a reality show

• The similar approach that Sam and Rolf shared on how Empire should play

• When the mics came on for a recording session you either knew your part or didn’t which helped to focus everyone even between sessions

• Rolf’s vision of walking onstage and leveling the place and how that shaped the entire artistic trajectory of Empire Brass

• That time when Lance told a radio interviewer that he used be an astronaut

• That time when Rolf woke Jeff up at 8:00 am and he was suddenly on his way to a radio interview where he ended up playing Guns N’ Roses

• The Empire Brass Seminar and the profound impact it had on so many people and how that hit home for Jeff when former EBS student Jen Montone joined him in the Dallas Symphony

• The intense attention to detail you need to play in a professional chamber ensemble

• Getting your musical ideas to the back of the hall

• Why you always have to have a musical opinion, go out on stage and make people feel something

• That time when Andrew was playing a gig with Marty Hackleman in Mexico and made a toast that had Marty staring a hole in him

• How all the time he had on the road with Empire led to a rekindled love of cartooning

• The parallels between his detail-oriented approach to both cartooning and music

• His process for making cartoons for NPR and The Wall Street Journal

• How he and Mark Gould collaborated on Orchestra Confidential

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The Perfect Mindset for Getting the Most Out of Graduate School

In this clip from Episode 181 of The Brass Junkies, the incredible Kevin Newton of Imani Winds shares what his mindset was before heading into graduate school.

I will play this clip for every single student I have who is entering graduate school.

It is remarkable when someone as young as he was is this intentional about their life.

For so many students, graduate school is what comes after undergrad and that’s as far as the soul searching goes for exactly why they want to get a graduate degree.

But Kevin saw graduate school as having a specific role in the development of his career and he crushed it.

We can all learn from this kind of awareness while heading into any new chapter of our lives!

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Monday YouTube Fix: How to Master Transcribing in Three Simple Steps

This is a fantastic video on how to master transcribing in three easy steps.

(Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t involve your instrument at first!)

Really good stuff here from Cole Davis.

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TEM248: When Is It Good Enough?

TEM248

Reminding ourselves that we’re not doing anything life or death here.

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TEM248: When is it good enough?

Reminding ourselves that we’re not doing anything life or death here and Brené Brown on dealing with haters.

On Today's Episode of The Entrepreneurial Musician:

• I am finally getting the TEM Book Club off the ground! Join me February 6th at 8:00 pm to discuss Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a life-changing book!

• What Seth Godin refers to as “The Hallway”

• The hard part being recognizing when something is good enough to share

• The tendency of treating our art like it’s life or death (and why that’s not good!)

• A quote from Brené Brown on dealing with haters

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.tem.fm/shownotes

The Brass Junkies Episode 181: Kevin Newton of Imani Winds

Since I am the person who books the guests on The Brass Junkies, I always like who we speak to. I wouldn’t book them if I didn’t!

But sometimes we interview someone who leaves me feeling energized and ready to tackle anything. This conversation with the incredible Kevin Newton did exactly that.

This was one where as soon as hung up, Lance and I both were muttering to each other how incredible it was.

Kevin is the horn player for Imani Winds and is a rising star in the music world. His outlook on making music and on life is so refreshing.

You are going to love this one. I promise.

You can watch the episode on YouTube below or head over to Pedal Note Media for all of the links to where to find it.

Enjoy!

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On This Episode of The Brass Junkies:

• Growing up in the small town of South Boston, VA (where the joke is they have a Walmart and a high school)

• The benefit of having your first teacher being your mother

• Long car rides with his mother which comprised of 10% NPR and 90% making him do things like sing the alto part along with the radio

• Going to the movies twice a week as a kid and listening intently to the music and falling in love with the horn (and not even knowing which instrument he was hearing)

• The incredible mentors he has had from the very beginning of his musical journey including his high school band director, Reginald Pervis

• Having only two lessons in his life before college and how that helped him to shape his perspective

• Taking two years off between undergrad and graduate school to take lessons with different people and get some “data”

• His recognition at the beginning of graduate school that he had two years to figure out how to make a career out of this and he got to work

• Deciding early on that he wanted to study with David Jolley

• The large portion of his lessons with Jolley that were “career building” and intentionally building the specific skills needed to thrive to get Kevin where he wanted to go

• What it was like getting to audition for Imani Winds after looking up to them as kid

• His mental approach to auditions which involves thinking of it as actually doing the job rather than asking for it

• The belief that you should always look for the good in people that was instilled in him by his family

• His horn quartet, Metropolitan Horn Authority, and their quest to have as much fun as possible and to bring the horn to the world in a new light

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The Brass Junkies Episode 180: Matt Neff of the North Carolina Symphony

As you will hear, Matt is a really good friend. We used to teach together and played next to each other in the American Festival Pops Orchestra for years.

We had so much back there that I’m not sure how we never got in any trouble!

Matt is a killer classical player and a killer jazz player! Both of them sound like his home base and that’s not easy to do.

I loved hearing him talk about taking lessons after he already had a major gig and crediting that with winning the North Carolina Symphony audition upon his retirement from the United States Air Force Band.

You can watch the episode on YouTube below or head over to Pedal Note Media for all of the links to where to find it.

Enjoy!

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On This Episode of The Brass Junkies:

• His brand new awarding of tenure with the North Carolina Symphony!

• The North Carolina Symphony’s significant outreach across the state

• Getting a lesson with Jim Nova to overcome nerves with auditions

• The negative self-talk he experienced in his Pittsburgh Symphony audition and how he dealt with it moving forward

• How he used taking 20-25 professional auditions during his time in the Navy Band to “check himself” as a musician

• Changing his pants while driving down I-95

• The different kind of practicing you do when you are preparing for auditions

• Matt’s 17-year run in the Navy Concert Band in Washington, DC

• The Ashley Alexander recording Matt heard as a kid featuring Commodores bass trombonist Lee Goss (the loudest bass trombonist to ever live according to Matt)

• His 2-hour audition for The Commodores including playing with the band, the trombone section and playing tunes with the rhythm section

• The variety he’s experienced in his career and why it’s so important to him

• Throwing Matt Niess under the bus

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The Brass Junkies Episode 179: Chris Lee of the National Arts Centre Orchestra

Canadian tuba virtuoso Chris Lee joined us for TBJ179!

Chris and I go back 30 years (how are we that old??) We met as students at the Empire Brass Seminar at Tanglewood. As you’ll hear, that program had a profound impact on both of our careers.

And his stories about attending recording sessions with both Empire Brass and Canadian Brass are amazing! I had no idea he had experienced either of those things. Truly incredible behind the scenes look, especially at such a young age!

It was also wild to hear him talk about being one of the people premiering the brand new Wynton Marsalis Tuba Concerto. Exciting stuff!

You can watch the episode on YouTube below or head over to Pedal Note Media for all of the links to where to find it.

Enjoy!

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On This Episode of The Brass Junkies:

• Getting to be in the recording studio with both Empire Brass and Canadian Brass and what he learned from each experience

• Intonation is a social skill

• The need to fit in most of the time and stick out occasionally as an orchestral tuba player

• The life and legacy of Dennis Miller

• Playing on Charles Dutiot’s final recording with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra courtesy of Dennis Miller

• The brand new Wynton Marsalis Tuba Concerto that he is performing in June 17th with the National Arts Center Orchestra (which will be live stream!)

• Multiphonics and how he practices it

• His process for when he first looks at a piece of music

• The lessons he learned from mentor Dan Perantoni

• How a great teacher can have a different view of your limitations than you do

• The value in not teaching every first year student the same

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Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra Nathaniel Silberschlag on Being Your Best

The last sentence here from Nathaniel Silberschlag, Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra, from Episode 171 of The Brass Junkies really floored me:

"I honestly just was not that nervous about (his Kennedy Center Opera audition) because I didn't have any high expectations for myself. And I think because of that it lent itself to… taking no prisoners.

And I was like, I'm just going to give this my best shot. I can only be the best me on a given day."

The last 11 words from that quote had a profound impact on me.

I can only be the best me on a given day.

I love it when something so obvious is said so eloquently in a way that I need to hear. All I can do is try to be the best version of me at any given time.

While this point is obvious, the way he puts it is brilliant. His job isn’t to be great. His job is only to be the best he can be today.

None of us is promised linear progress in anything. Not even one of the best horn players in the world like Nathaniel!

There will be plenty of times when something isn’t as good on Thursday as it was on Wednesday, or even a week ago. Rather than getting held up on where we should be (in our minds, of course!), Nathaniel is encouraging us to focus simply on being our best possible version today. And that has nothing to do with last week!

Thanks for the reminder, Nathaniel. This is something I need to be reminded of from time to time!

(The above GIF is from the part of the interview when Nathaniel told us about how he had to tell the Kennedy Center Opera section that he couldn’t go out for a drink after winning the audition because he was 19 and because his father was waiting for him in the car. We were dying.)

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You can watch our entire interview with Nathaniel Silberschlag on YouTube below or find links to all the other places you can find it here.

The Power of Yet

Here is a less than 60-second clip from TEM245 about the little three-letter word that can transform negative statement into a positive one that helps to foster a growth mindset.

Works in the practice room, on stage, in auditions, literally everywhere!

The Difference Between Motivation and Inspiration

This is a quick chat I streamed on The Entrepreneurial Musician YouTube channel.

It is on the difference between motivation and inspiration (and why motivation is NOT the first step but the end result.) It applies just as much to practicing and performing as it does to the business side of my career.

And it features about 30 seconds of me laying down some tuba at the very beginning of the video.

Enjoy!