Will anyone be at Tromblowin' tomorrow? Bill Reichenbach will be the clinician. It's gotta be better than last year. 9:30 am at JMU. It's a great way to spend a Saturday. Somehow they signed me up as a bass bone player. Ayyy. People are going to think I do that. Anyway, should be fun.

Bill Reichenbach at Tromblowin

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The Tromblowin event is a low key sort of thing. Mostly aimed at college trombone majors and school age players. It is put on by a tbone quintet called Mr Jefferson's Bones in conjunction with the school of music at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. I think they were originally from Charlottesville, which is the home of UVA and necessarily obsessed with Thomas Jefferson. Matt Neiss from the neighboring Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA also brought his Shenandoah Trombone Collective and is a regular big name at the Tromblowin event.

Anyway, at the event there were some group reading sessions, and a sit down with Bill Reichenbach. I got him to sign a poster and I finally got a selfie with a real bass trombone player.
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Bill Reichenbach was a genuinely nice and down to earth kind of guy. In his sit down session he talked mainly about the music business around Los Angeles session playing and recording for artist albums, TV and movies. Fascinating and depressing all at the same time. He talked about how exclusive this kind of work is, and how the people are doing it got into it. Just to say that getting into and working in a symphony orchestra looks like child's play in comparison.

He played a concert later in the day, which you can catch here:

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There's a lot of Bill blowing changes. His stories and introductions are kind of hard to hear on the recording. He conducts a trombone choir in his classic arrangement of Scarborough Fair. Later (1:48:30) he participated in a trio of an arrangement of Bugler's Holiday, but written for 3 bass trombones accompanied by the JMU trombone choir.

Tromblowin has been kind of uneven in the quality of the event. This year was a definite high point with Bill Reichenbach. Last year was Brittany Lasch, and probably the least inspiring event they have put on. 2023 had Marshall Gilkes, and I'm very sorry I missed that one. Carol Jarvis was good, Christopher Bill was meh... Other great ones have been Wycliffe Gordon and Michael Davis. Sometimes they have a regional group like a DC military group come and headline the event. I'd really like to see them bring the Capitol Bones in, but that might be too big a production.

And then there was the mass choir formed by all of the participants in the event. Jeez. Trombone (bass) as a percussion instrument. Trombone as a time drag. Trombone as an intonation randomizer. The further you get down the slide, the more out of tune it gets. I wouldn't have made it as an educator for sure.
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