Thomas Hultén & Dr. Bob Linder on KUHF 90.1 July 9, 2010- 12 P.M.
On Friday, July 9 2010 Dr. Bob Linder and Thomas Hultén will be interviewed on Houston’s “The Front Row” – KUHF 90.1. The show starts at noon and goes til 1pm. Topics of discussion will be Thomas’ album “Slide Side” as well as our new Texas Jazz Masters series.
Brass Spectacular – Tribute to Bill Pearce – Queen of Spades
This upcoming weekend, May 14-16, I’m going to Charlotte, North Carolina, to participate in the Salvation Army Brass Spectacular. It was started a few years ago here in Houston when Jamie Hood, trumpeter extra-ordinaire and Salvationist, brought together a “dream-team” of a brass-band, mainly with players from the Houston orchestras, some guys from the New York Staff Band and still a few coming over from Europe. Steven Mead was the euphonium soloist, both Steven Bulla and William Himes were there and brought pieces they’d composed, and it was just a great night!
Jamie moved to Charlotte in 2009 to keep working for the Salvation Army, and brought the Brass Specatcular with him. I haven’t be able to go since that first concert until now, I’m sure it’ll be a blast. The trombone section will be killer, with both Herb Bruce and Eric Alexander in it, my old collegues from Sprititual to the ‘Bone.
Bill Pearce, pioneering radio broadcaster and founder of the Nightsounds radio program died February 23, 2010 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 83.
Bill was a fantastic trombone player, and influenced a whole generation of players with his smooth and unique style of playing. I got to spend a day with him in his studio in Rockford, Illinois, about ten years ago, and I’ve never met such a humble, gracious and truly Christian person before or since. He remains one of my big heros, both as a player and as a person. There’s a very nice tribute to Bill on Doug Yeo’s home page:
http://www.yeodoug.com/pearce_tribute.html
We just finished the Houston Grand Opera season with Tjaikovskij’s Queen of Spades. There are some very nice moments, but I have to admit it’s not one of my favorite operas. It’s long, over three and a half hours, and the trombones hardly play at all in the first two acts, so when the action finally starts in the third act, it’s way past my bedtime!
La Bayadère and Fancy Free, nice Slide Side-review
Ok, I know I should have written this earlier, we’re already done with Houston Ballet’s new production of “La Bayadère – the Temple Dancer”, music by Leopold Minkus. (No relation to Charlie Mingus….)
But, it’s not that often we’re having four live snakes on stage! I got to pet one of them on the cast-party on opening night, and he liked hugging the ladies.
The best part was when we played a school show for 2500 middle-schoolers, and the snake-handler came up on stage and had a little speech for the kids. “If you stay in school, and listen to your parents, study really hard and get good grades, you can become a snake-handler just like me.” Yeah, right!
We have another weekend of Leonard Bernstein’s “Fancy Free”, written in 1944 when he was 26. It’s about three sailors in New York, so I guess it has something to do with “On the town”. It’s really fun to play, lots to do in the brass, with little jazz solos here and there. I even get to use a solo-tone mute and do my Tommy Dorsey-imitation, complete with slide-vibrato!
For you Swedish-speakers and -readers, I got a very nice review of my album on DIG jazz, a great web-site devoted exclusively to jazz. Here’s the link: http://www.digjazz.se/Diggat.html#Hulten
We’re starting rehearsing Tjaikovskij’s Pique Dame at the opera in a couple of weeks, and I aslo have a show coming up with Marvin Hamlisch and Joel Grey, should be fun.
Kepp swinging!
Tosca at HGO – Brent Phillips at UH – Jazz at Cézanne
I’m continuing my somewhat schizophrenic musical journey with going straight from Chorus Line to playing Tosca with the Houston Grand Opera. We had opening night a few days ago, and you know people like it
when there’s that roar coming from the audience at the end!
Patricia Racette debuts in the role of Tosca, and I can’t resist quoting from a couple of the reviews:
“Houston Grand Opera’s new production of Tosca, custom tailored to the company by director John Caird and set and costume designer Bunny Christie, is an absolute triumph. The magnetism of the opera itself, with three of Puccini’s greatest characters sketched in page after page of his strongest music, is allowed to speak for itself. Orchestra, chorus and soloists are united by the incisive baton of Patrick Summers, and the result is a non-stop ride of staggering intensity. To put it briefly, this is how Tosca should be done.” (Concerto.net)
“From the first chords that explode from the orchestra, maestro Patrick Summers just about propelling himself out of the pit with them, a gripping sense of urgency drives Houston Grand Opera’s potent new production of Puccini’s Tosca, which opened Friday at Wortham Center.
Under John Caird’s astute direction, just about every aspect of this Tosca sustains that dramatic intensity — most particularly, a superlative trio of star performances.” (Houston Chronicle)
Pretty nice!
We had Brent Phillips, trombone professor at Baylor University in Baylor, and former soloist with the US Marine Band “President’s Own”, come and do a clinic and a concert at University of Houston yesterday.
This guy is absolutely amazing. He is very detailed, organized and analytical in his approach in how to learn to play the horn, yet one of the most musical players you can hear. Check out his newest CD “Stepping Stones for trombone”, especially aimed at younger players. Very impressive!
A couple of jazz things to check out this week: This Friday night January 29 I’m playing with trumpeter Ralph Stivison and a cooking rhythm section at the Cézanne jazz café on Montrose Boulvard, downbeat at 9 pm. Also this coming Sunday at Trinity Episcopal on Holman Street we’re doing jazz masses at 10.30 am and 12.30 pm with the Matt Lemmler group, Trinity have their annual jazz festival this weekend. Come by and get blessed!
A Chorus Line at the Hobby Center
After playing 32 Nutcrackers in December plus all the Christmas gigs, and then having a nice week off with my family, I’m now in the second week of playing “A Chorus Line” at the Hobby Center here in Houston.
I saw the movie years ago, but never played the show until now, and I gotta say it’s a treat.
With a great score by Marvin Hamlisch, the show is basically about a Broadway audition, and the life stories of the dancers. It’s based on real interviews made in the early 70s, and when the show opened on Broadway it was a huge hit, and ran from 1975 to 1990.
This production is the Broadway tour, they’ve been on the road for about a year and a half, and will stay here in Houston for another week.
The HGO winter season is starting up, we had the first orchestra reading for Puccini’s “Tosca” this morning. One of my favourites, I played it in Stockholm with the Royal Opera a year and a half ago, but this time I actually get to rehearse it!
There’s also some jazz coming up; January 29 I will play together with trumpeter Ralph Stivison, pianist Ted Wenglinsky, bassist Andy Gordon and a yet to be named drummer at Cézanne jazz club on Montrose boulevard. Hope to see you there!
Cactus Music CD Release Party!!!!!!
Are you tired of hearing the same Muzak in every store you go into while you do your holiday gift shopping???? Well, allow me to offer a respite in your present collections. Come by Cactus Music, located at 2110 Portsmouth Street Houston, TX 77098 (713) 526-9272 this Saturday, December 19th from 12:00pm to 1:00 pm and enjoy some live music while you shop. Join me, Warren Sneed, Paul Chester, Thomas Helten, and Joel Fulgham at Cactus with refreshments provided by St. Armold’s Brewing Company. Pick up a copy of Slide Side! Hope to see you there!
The Nutcracker at the Houston Ballet
The holiday season is here, and for me that means 35 performances of Tjaikovskij’s classic The Nutcracker with the Houston Ballet. I’ve played it several times before, but only for about a week at a time. From Thanksgiving up until the New Year is a different story! Our Principal trumpet Jim Vassallo figured he has played it over a thousand times over the years!
Still, it’s a great piece of music, and lots of fun to play. And compared to Lohengrin, the Wagner opera we just finished, it clocks in at half the time, two hours instead of four!
I won’t spend all my time in the pit, though. This coming Saturday, December the 5th, I’ll be playing with Ambient Brass and the Houston Choral Society for their Christmas show. I’m also playing Christmas concerts at the Grace Presbyterian Church and St Luke’s United Methodist Church.
If you want to check out some cool jazz, come to River Oaks Baptist Church on December 13 at 6 pm, where we’ll play with Matt Lemmler’s sextet. Also, on December 19 we’ll have an in-store concert at Cactus Records at noon 
with my own group promoting Slide Side, my new CD. Hope to see you there!
Wagner back at HGO
The last time the Houston Grand Opera presented a Wagner-opera was Tannhäuser in 2001. Now, finally, Wagner is back, with a spectacular production of Lohengrin in a co-production with the Grand Théatre de Genève in Switzerland. Simon O’Neill sings Lohengrin, Adrianne Pieczonka Elsa, and Maestro Patrick Summers makes it all come together.
If you think the concept of a four and a half-hour opera sounds a little scary, I promise you there’s a reason Richard Wagner is considered one of the greatest composers ever. Whether you’re in the audience or part of the production, you get mesmerized by the story and the music.
The first complete Wagner-opera I played was Tristan and Isolde with the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Sweden, last year. Everybody kept telling me it would be a great experience, but I wasn’t really looking forward to spending five hours in the pit, counting rests. How wrong I was! I was completely captivated, by the music, the story, the skill of the singers. That they can be heard over an 80-piece orchestra is beyond me!
Lohengrin is considered Wagner’s “Italian” opera, not because it’s particularly Italian in style, but probably because it’s full of melodies familiar even to the casual listener. Pretty much everybody would recognize the Bridal March from the third act (“Here comes the bride”), the Preludes to the both the first and third acts are also famous pieces.
For you trombone-geeks: My friend Terry the Repair Guy is building me an old Conn 88H Elkhart with a Kanstul CR Open Wrap-trigger. Hopefully I’ll get it next week, report to follow. It should be good!
More trombone-geek stuff: I had the opportunity to try a German Lätzsch 210 trombone for a couple of weeks. A very different animal, at least for me who’ve always played American horns. Beutifully made with a warm pleasant sound, but in the end I still prefer my old Conn.
Update – “Slide Side” the CD is out!
UPDATE – Added Buy Links at bottom of post.
Now for the big event this fall, at least for me: “Slide Side”, my new jazz CD on the Tierra Studios label, is finally out and ready to buy and ship to a location near you!
I still have to see and hear the finished CD, I hope to get one later today, but listening to the master-copy I’m very happy with it. When Bob Linder and Glenn Wheeler from Tierra contacted me in July of 2008 to record a CD, they had a short wish-list for the project: new original music and getting the best musicians and sound available. Bob was pretty insistent (those of you who know him know what I mean!) that he wanted original music that was still listenable, not too “out there”, and not too long, 4-5 minutes for each tune. We also agreed we needed a few jazz-standards on there.
I was given pretty free hands, and decided to record the three standard tunes with my “brunch-trio”, trombone, guitar and bass. For most of the tunes we used a quintet of bone, sax and rhythm, I also did a couple with just rhythm-section. We added horns, percussion and strings on most of them, and I gotta say it came out even better than we hoped.
It sounds fantastic, the playing by some of the top Houston players is amazing and the music is great, really fun to listen to. Swedish tenor-players Eric Norstrom and Nils Sandstrom contributed one original each, thanks to both of you! Dan Kramlich wrote some exceptional string charts, and yours truly did the rest of the writing and arranging.
Check out the Tierra Studios web-site, www.tierrastudios.com, and copy this link to your browser to order the album from them, http://www.tierrastudios.com/2009/10/link-to-purchase-thomas-hultens-slide-side/
I will try to set something up on this site so you can order the album here, and it will also be available for downloading from iTunes.
More good news: we had break-in in our house back in January, and my three main horns were stolen, a Conn 6H, a Conn 8H and a Conn 88H-CL. Luckily I have a couple of back-ups, my old King 2B and an old silver-plated Conn 88H. This was right before we started recording, so it was a bit rough getting started. Thanks to the fine detectives at the Houston Police Department and my good friend Rick Reeves, who found the 88H-CL on eBay, I finally got all three of them back last week!
Buy a Slide Side CD with Pay Pal
UH Jazz Concert, starting Lohengrin, Lotsa Gigs
If you want to hear some good jazz, come the out the jazz concert at Muniversity of Houston’s Moores Opera House Wednesday night October 8 at 7.30 pm. Both big bands will perform under the direction of Noe Marmalejo and Ryan Gabbart, Henry Darragh will sing and play some cooking piano and I’ll play a few tunes, among them a new big band arrangement of Pilska Polska form my CD. These band are made up of students from UH, and they’re kicking and swinging, good stuff!
So what about my CD, will it ever come? Yes! It’s off to the printers and is scheduled for release on October 19, more on this web-site and also on the Tierra Studios site, www.tierrastudios.com.
The first opera for the season is Wagner’s Lohengrin, one of those five-hour deals. Most operas or shows I’ve played have been at the most three hours, and I couldn’t imagine sitting in the pit for five hours. That was before I got to play Tristan and Isolde with the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Sweden, last fall. It was an amazing musical experience, and this Lohengrin-production promises to be another high-light. Patrick Summers is conducting, cast is great, something to look forward to.
August and September are brutally hot and humid here in Houston, and gigs don’t really start to pick up until late September-early October. I had a pretty busy weekend with a Klezmer-gig Friday, Paragon Brass Ensemble Saturday morning, Second Baptist early evening and then a party-gig with Infinite Groove Saturday night. Sunday night we rehearsed with Joel Fulgham’s new big band made up of some of Houston’s finest. Joel is a fantastic drummer, and he can soon be heard on my new album, out October 19….
How I celebrated winning the HGO/Houston Ballet audition? I spent $300 on a new rear-main seal for my $900 Chevy truck, so now it won’t dump any more oil on my drive-way!
Winning the HGO/HB audition-Kemah Jazz
I’ve been playing with the Houston Grand Opera for a couple of years as a sub on Principal trombone, something I’ve really enjoyed. It’s very thrilling being in the middle of a big opera production. My good friend John McCroskey, formerly with the Houston Symphony, has been playing with the Houston Ballet. John is a fantastic player, and a wonderful person in every way.
Both orchestras play in the same house, the Wortham Center, and most of the players are the same, but since there are two different organizations, on paper they’re separate.
Last fall it became clear there would be an opening for the position of Principal trombone in both the opera and the ballet orchestra. Needless to say I’ve been looking forward to the audition with a combination of fear and anticipation. I’ve been practicing like a maniac, playing for pretty much everybody I could think of, taking lessons, taping myself, doing mock auditions and doing whatever I could to prepare myself.
I’m happy to say this time it paid off! Monday, September 21, I managed to win the job. There were two of us in the finals, and up until to the end I was sure they would pick the other player, a guy I really respect and admire. Even the finals were behind the screen, and I guess I must have done something right, because they ended up picking me. I can’t really describe the feeling, just a huge relief after all the work I’ve put into it, and finally landing a job after having free-lanced since 1997. Last time I won a job was in 1990, so it’s been a while!
I’ve learned a lot about myself and how to audition during this process, and as soon as I’ve collected my thoughts I’ll try to write something and put it on the web-site.
Well, the Kemah Jazz Festival is coming up this weekend, hopefully without rain and hurricanes this year. Tomorrow Friday September 25 I’ll be performing with the Musician’s Union Big Band, and Sunday the 27th with Thomas Helton and Tribute, the original charts from “Birth of the Cool”. That’ll be a treat, so come check it out if you can!
Kemah Jazzfestival
The Kemah Jazz Festival is coming up September 25-27, right by the waters of Galveston Bay. It was canceled last year due to Hurricane Ike, but we’re back this year. I will be performing Friday night with the Houston Professional Musician’s Association Big Band, featuring Lynn Seaton on bass, and Sunday afternoon with my buddy Thomas Helton’s (no relation!) group Tribute. Thomas has collected all the original charts from Miles Davis’s legendary “Birth of the Cool”-album from 1948, and we’ll perfom them all, complete with French horn and tuba in the group. It’s a gas getting to play them, and hopefully we’ll get some more opportunities in the future with this group.
More Hurricane Ike-related news: I’ve been playing at Houston’s Second Baptist Church (56 000 members in all campuses) for several years. The worship center at their main campus was heavily damaged last year in the hurricane, and after an extensive renovation they had the opening weekend last weekend. They’ve upgraded all the audio and video systems, in addition to pretty much redoing the whole interior, and looks and sounds amazing. The moved the horn section behind the drums and percussion, and we can’t help but feel like they think we’re not as good-looking as the drummers!
Thomas Helton and Tribute
Date: 2009-09-05
Start Time: 09:00 PM
Location: Cezanne, 4100 Montrose Blvd, Houston, Texas
Link out: Click here
Description: Houston’s home for acoustic jazz will host a tribute to the Gerry Mulligan and Bob Brookmeyer Quartet. Bassist Thomas Helton leads his band, Tribute, with Thomas Hultén on trombone, Martin Langford on sax and Bobby Adams on drums.
Cabaret!
I think it’s safe to say I’ve now reached the pinnacle of my career: I get to play with the Kit Kat Klub band! I like playing trombone by itself, but getting to do it in women’s clothes and doubling on tuba just adds a whole new dimension to being a musician. And the rest of the guys in the band, now I know what sisterhood feels like!
When I saw myself in the mirror I realized I look like a mix of my mom and Björn Borg (my mom’s never been much of a tennis player though). I did wish for a bigger cup-size, hoping to make my wife jealous. As it is she’ll just laugh at me, you just can’t have everything in life…
This production of the musical Cabaret is in Houston’s Hobby Center with TUTS, Theater Under The Stars. The orchestra in this production totals 11 musicians, with five of us onstage acting as the club band, that’s why we’re in drag. (The other guys are of course very envious, and I probably have to report a couple of them for sexual harassment after grabbing my tits). I’ve always liked this show, great (very tragic) story, great music and fun to play.
I own this old King Bb tuba that I play dixie-gigs on from time to time (it has to stay in the garage, not trained to stay inside). Luckily the tuba part in Cabaret is pretty basic, I do the “um”, the rest of the band “pa”, if it was more complicated I’d be in trouble!
Recording trombone for my album
Trombone overdubs for upcoming Jazz album from Thomas Hultén on Vimeo.
I record a trombone part for a song on my upcoming jazz album at Tierra Studios on May 21.
