Obviously he's not a trombonist, but there are things I noticed listening to his playing in a fairly small hall that left me positively gobsmacked.

What struck me wasn't speed, range, any of the stuff that great technicians all have, but color.

I have never, ever in my life heard a musician on any instrument with more control over the color of their sound than Mr. Hooten. In every register, range and volume he could shift from dark to bright like nobody I've ever heard.

One of the things that stuck with me most wasn't even playing a piece, but a parlor trick from his masterclass. He was demonstrating how he sometimes need to cut through the orchestra when everyone is playing at full volume by playing a series of loud high notes with a metal straight mute, and then playing the same passage open, trying to play as bright and ping-y as it was with the mute. Other than being louder, the sound was almost exactly the same.

The control he played with in the recital was as if he had a full set of mutes constantly going in and out of the bell, but while playing an open horn. These top-tier symphony players are really on a different level than the rest of us.

Yup, Tom is a monster. As well as playing 1st trumpet on basically the whole thing, he played a Klezmer clarinet piece on piccolo trumpet at the LA Phil holiday brass concert that flabbergasted me. That kind of mastery of soloistic piccolo playing is just an entire other world from playing principal trumpet like he does.