Douglas Burden Transcript
Leah Roseman:
You're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. In this episode, I speak with a wonderful colleague, the bass trombone Douglas Burden, who has recently retired from Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra after 50 years. He shares his perspectives on his career, including wisdom passed down from some of his mentors, including Emory Remington and Arnold Jacobs, and the lessons he learned about staying healthy and keeping his playing at the highest level. Doug is also well-known as an educator and will continue to teach at the University of Ottawa. He also shares his thoughts on what an orchestral career means, his memories of different conductors, his practice tips, and the importance of balancing different aspects of a life well-lived. As well, I need to add that originally he had recorded part of a Bordogni Vocalise and technically, that recording didn't work out so what I'm including in the description is a separate link so you can hear his playing and it was easier to leave the references to that into the conversation so that it flowed better. I hope you enjoy this episode. Good morning, Doug Burden. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Douglas Burden:
It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for inviting me.
Leah Roseman:
So you're retiring from our orchestra, The National Arts Centre Orchestra, as our bass trombone player of 50 years. That's such an amazing accomplishment. Anyway, back to our conversation. I bought this book of Bordogni Vocalises many years ago. They're printed for violin. And I asked our colleague, Karen Donnelley, "Do you know these?" And she said, "Are you kidding me? Of course. All the brass players, we all know those."
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. Everything from an instrumental music point of view, I think, is aimed to emulate the human voice. The human voice, I think, is maybe the most perfect instrument and it has such a range of emotions and complexities and everything to go with it, so what better instrument to emulate than the human voice, is I think what we all aim for.
Leah Roseman:
There's so many places we could go now, but I was just thinking about Jack Everly because your last concert will be with him. And you mentioned the headphones switching to record. And he spoke with me last year on this podcast so people who missed that might be curious because we talked a lot about accompanying movies and what it's like for him on the podium.
Douglas Burden:
Well, I have many, many highlights, as you imagine, I've been going through in my memory over the past year. And I don't think any one particularly stands out because there are so many highlights. And one of the highlights was with Jack when we accompanied the West Side Story movie and the challenges that came with such difficult music and such complex music. It was just the fact that we were able to pull it off so successfully. And really, it's difficult music, but it's great music to play. But it's even more challenging to have to sync it up with what's on the screen because as what Jack explained to us, and I'm sure he mentioned to you, is that when they spliced the film together, they were various takes of dance scenes and those dance scenes weren't exactly at the same tempo with each take. So here Jack was having to adjust to the soundtrack and we were faster, slower, faster, and I thought the orchestra did an incredible job following Jack, of course,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. This brings me to one of my questions I have, because we sit at opposite ends of the orchestra and the way our instruments are, I'm a violinist so my attack is very immediate. But for you, I think there's a bit more of a delay plus you're way at the back, so how does that work?
Douglas Burden:
We have to anticipate all of the time. I know with my own playing and my own practicing and what I teach with my students, the production of the note is crucial. And words in teaching, I've discovered through the years, are so important and it's interesting that you, as a violinist, use the term attack. I used to use that word attack and I've tried to train my mind to say the word release because the concept of attack can sometimes translate to a student aggression and point and accent, which isn't always important. But for us as wind players, as brass players, it's releasing the wind.
Douglas Burden:
And for my teaching and my own playing, it's to have an instantaneous response to that movement of wind. Once that's attained, then you have to compensate and anticipate when you play because not only is there's this huge distance between us in the back row of the orchestra and the audience, that's not even to mention the conductor, but also the register that the pitches we play are much, much lower and human ears don't detect those quite as quickly as frequencies in the upper spectrum. So we're constantly having to anticipate and I think we've done a pretty good job with the low brass in the NAC because it's a common problem with certainly amateur groups, that trombones are behind, tubas are behind. It's part of the toolbox that we have to perfect. It helps to have a good conductor, but knowing that you have to advance that.
Douglas Burden:
One thing was interesting is there are certain orchestras who purposely, because of what the conductor's gestures are, play in a delayed fashion. And if I can mention names, I would say that Mario Bernardi was one such conductor. There would be an ictus to his gesture and then the sound would happen. And over the years, I've been fortunate enough to play extra with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra many times and Charles Dutoit is exactly the opposite. And it was a huge adjustment to go from NACO to the OSM, who are right on the beat and the brass section that much in advance of the beat. Again, there was that computing that had to be changed.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's very interesting. As a string player, I feel like we always play delayed, but less so with some conductors than others, for sure. There's always a change. And the more indistinct the beat, I think the later we all respond because we want to make sure we feel it together, but I find that young string players coming in are always ahead. They're always coming in early, so it's the complete opposite. Bernardi, I worked with him a little bit towards the end of his life and I found he was unusually controlling. If he felt it sped up at all, he would immediately pull on the reins and we would fall apart, like he didn't want to go with what we were doing. It was a very different, maybe old school approach.
Douglas Burden:
I think your initial response was what is probably more accurate rather than old school, new school. And I know exactly what you mean and what his gestures were and he would get very indignant that people weren't following his beat exactly. And I've got one little theory as to why that might be, and I could be wrong, but from my perspective, the history of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, when it started in 1969, it was a small audience, but a great orchestra, so they could only really have one performance per week. And they were happy to fill the hall because I can remember talking with Evelyn Greenberg working so hard to fill the hall for that for the opening night and they had to do that one concert every week for the duration of that particular season. And with the collective agreement, there were eight services per week, which meant you had seven rehearsals leading into one performance. What are you going to do in seven rehearsals other than just rehears it to death? So any degree of spontaneity would've been eliminated, but that's also became the hallmark of the NAC Orchestra, what is the incredible ensemble nature, the balance, the intonation, because all of these things could be worked in a microscope almost, for the seven rehearsals leading up to what were fantastic one concerts per week.
Leah Roseman:
And to contrast that with the way it has evolved, certainly pre-pandemic, we would sometimes be doing a recording, doing maybe two or three programs a week we'd have to have ready, depending on the situation.
Douglas Burden:
Absolutely, and that's where the orchestra has grown exponentially, grown musically, repertoire, abilities, being flexible. And I don't know whether you're going to lead down this road, but we are one of the few orchestras that not only play concerts on stage with mainstream orchestra repertoire, but we also were in the pit very often accompanying opera and ballet plus pops, so it's an extremely versatile group of musicians that are in NACO who are incredibly flexible and just amazing musicians.
Leah Roseman:
So you were saying in your retirement speech the other night that the bass trombone's known for storms and graveyards, I guess, low brass in general.
Douglas Burden:
Yes. Well, it's the type casting that comes with the sound of the instrument. Earlier composers took that type casting to create these contexts, these atmospheres, which come very easily with the sounds of the trombones. So the storm scenes, the most classic storm scene is from William Tell, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and graveyard scenes, one of the earliest operas to use trombones was Don Giovanni by Mozart. And we are saved for the end of the opera. Just a bit of a professional background, operas start usually at 8:00 at night. Don Giovanni lasts a little over three hours. Trombones enter the pit at 10:30 because we only play the very last and where Don Giovanni is being pulled into hell because of the sins of his life. And so those are the type casting sounds that composers used for a long time.
Douglas Burden:
Fortunately, we have lost some of that type casting element and more modern composers now feature what the possibilities and the technical capabilities of the instrument are. When we are playing loud and low, then it's harsh and aggressive, but we can also play very, very soft and it's a very, very warm, mellow, almost a religious type of a sound with chorales. And the other thing is trombones usually play in groups of three in a trombone section, so you get this blended choral, chorale essence, which I think is, I love it. That's why I've been around for so long.
Leah Roseman:
So tenor trombone is the usual trombone we think of, right?
Douglas Burden:
Correct.
Leah Roseman:
It's called a tenor.
Douglas Burden:
No, sorry. Go on.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I was just curious. So trombone players, you would be learning both. Is that normal in university or conservatory?
Douglas Burden:
It's a very good question. Initially, that would be very, very true. As a high school trombone, for example, you would learn the tenor trombone and that would be the basis from which you might explore. "Okay. Maybe I like the range and the sound of the bass trombone." Nowadays, as you get from high school into university, more and more tenor trombonists, in addition to playing tenor trombone, will also learn how to play bass trombone. If you hope to have an orchestral career as a tenor trombonist, you have to have the ability to also play alto trombone. And the trombone family, again, is very much akin to the human voice because higher than the alto trombone, there is a trombone called the soprano trombone. Karen Donnelley has one and a few years ago, we did a chamber music program and we featured trombone ensemble, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and a contrabass trombone. These are registers that relate to the register and vocal range.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have to transpose at all?
Douglas Burden:
We don't have to transpose, thank goodness, but we have to be able to play in different clefs. So the primary clef for trombone is bass clef, but with traditions coming out of European publishing and learning solfege, you also have to be able to play in tenor clef and in alto clef. So they are all what we call C clefs, there's no transposition, but you visually have to make those adjustments. Russian composers, such as Rimsky-Korsakov, in particular, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, they used to love to change from bass to tenor to alto clef. Now, the reason behind their thoughts is by using these different clefs, it would eliminate ledger lines so you don't have to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ledger lines to find out what pitch you're on. But when you're in the middle of a performance, it's very easy to forget what clef you're in so when someone makes a mistake, we'll whisper over and say, "Clef warp. You just had clef warp."
Leah Roseman:
We read a lot of ledger lines or we have to read octave down in the first violins, especially, and I just write in the notes sometimes, especially with my bad vision. Is it five ledger lines?
Douglas Burden:
That's what I do being in the bass register, because there's no clef lower than the bass clef. But bass trombone, we're in pedal registers, where it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, no, maybe five ledger lines. So yes, there are times when I definitely have to write in the name of the note. Because the other thing that happens when you play low, very, very low and particularly very, very loud, you begin to hyperventilate, and so the vision begins to blur and the lines begin to shake like that. Even though you're in great shape, that's a physiological thing that we have to deal with and have to make sure that when you walk on stage, you don't have an empty stomach because you'll faint otherwise. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
That brings me to Arnold Jacobs. What did he say? The song and the wind. Why don't you explain who he was and ...
Douglas Burden:
Well, he was a legendary brass pedagogue, whose reputation actually went beyond the brass world into woodwind players and also some singers. Arnold Jacobs and my adoption of his concepts came late in my education. I did not actually start studying with him until I was graduated from The Eastman School of Music and already playing in Ottawa. And his secret was, he himself knew the complexities of the anatomy, the medical, the physiological aspects of playing, but he was able to encapsulate and distill something of complexity into very, very simple concepts. The books often say wind and song, but if he were to write the books, he would say song first and the wind makes it happen. I guess from a literary perspective, wind and song rolls off the tongue easier.
Douglas Burden:
With our wonderful brains as human beings, we have this ability to analyze, and he knows that. And one of his pet phrases was analysis leads to paralysis. And what he tried to do was to simplify things as much as possible, very, very complex concepts, but with a very simple musical approach. And every person that's studied with Arnold Jacobs would have a different take from him because he was such a master teacher. He was able to analyze your strengths and weaknesses immediately within the first 15 minutes.
Douglas Burden:
In my first lesson with him, the first thing that asked me to do was to play a melody from memory. "I don't want you to read anything. I just want you to play your most favorite melody." And within an instant, he had sized me up and then prescribed different exercises, different approaches, different concepts to help. He had a wide array of breathing devices, which could help visualize what it is you were doing. Speaking of visualizing, one of his tools is this device, which is a mouthpiece visualizer. This is what it looks like and sounds like in the raw sound. This is where the pitches are created. And if someone was having embouchure problems, that would help to visualize it.
Leah Roseman:
If I could just ask, you weren't singing there, you were just buzzing the pitches?
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. And there are some teachers, Alain Trudel, the famous Canadian trombonist, uses what's called free buzzing. So this is the wind moving forward and the embouchure, which is a fancy word to describe all the many muscles making up this part of our facial mask, it's the degree of tightening and relaxing that creates the change of the pitch. So with some people, if you get analyzing, then you start thinking of muscle, this muscle, that muscle. Arnold Jacobs says, "No. It's the melody. It's the song." And by trial and error and by repetition and by always aiming to play beautifully, the body will eventually figure it all out. You actually get in the way if you analyze it.
Leah Roseman:
His lungs were compromised by childhood asthma.
Douglas Burden:
Yes, asthma. Oh, senior moment, emphysema, it was. He knew he had this condition and emphysema, as I understand it and I'm no expert, is a condition where the elasticity of one's lungs gets lost as you age, so the ability to expand and contract reduces. So knowing this as a younger man, he made it his mission to investigate, through medicine and also psychologists, the interaction of the body and the mind. The other interesting background to Arnold Jacobs, when he was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, is he was a double major. He was a voice major and a tuba major. And he had to make a choice which to follow because when you sat in his studio and heard him speak with you, it was this most richest, roundest, baritone bass voice. You could easily see and picture him on the stage in an operatic role, and I think he made the right choice.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So he played with Chicago Symphony most of his career.
Douglas Burden:
One neat little story is when he was a student at Curtis, Fritz Reiner, the famous conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was the conductor of the student orchestra of Curtis and the practice room, because each student had their own room assigned to them, happened to be very, very close to the corridor which linked the Curtis School to where the Philadelphia Orchestra performed on stage. So all of these amazing musicians and conductors would pass in front of his practice room on a daily basis, which then elevates one's expectations of what you are doing.
Douglas Burden:
Another one of his pet phrases that he would tell me is, "Doug, stop practicing and begin performing," because one of the unsaid rules or elements about practicing is we all give ourself a second chance or a third chance. The practicing by repetition will improve. Sometimes, practicing only perfects your mistakes but if you begin performing and expecting that each time you play, even if it's just a whole note or a scale, it's a scale that's going to be performed on Southam Hall Stage, it really changes your expectation of your own performance.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. And actually you may not know this, but there's all these clips of him teaching people on YouTube, which I was listening to. And one thing I really thought was great is he said.
Leah Roseman:
So yeah, so some of these stories, and one thing I really thought was great is he said, "Don't talk to students about changing their bad habits. When you notice a bad habit, just talk about what they need, the new habit."
Douglas Burden:
Yeah, yeah. I should actually check out those YouTube clips because I was unaware of that. Thank you for letting me know. Yeah, he was legendary because he was unique, and he didn't try to fit you into his mold. He would take you where you were and take you to the next level. And it really was inspiring. And I do have to thank the Canada Council for allowing me to make the flights to Chicago and to pay the expenses to have that added value learning, after I had my degree and I was already playing with the orchestra.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Let's go back and talk about your beginning. So you started on the cornet? Like a lot of kids. Then when they needed a trombone player, they're like, "Take this thing."
Douglas Burden:
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Your parents were pastors with the Salvation Army Church, so you grew up with this very rich musical tradition of singing and brass playing? Is that right?
Douglas Burden:
Very, very much so. Yeah, yeah. While I was in the womb, I was probably exposed to all of this music. And yeah, the things that I took for granted as a young boy and never analyzed. But as I look back now, I said, "Wow, what an opportunity, what an experience." These are things that I was able to absorb without even knowing what was coming into my mind and my body, and I'm eternally grateful to my parents for that. My mother was a lovely singer and a very fine pianist. I can remember in high school, as a grade 13 student back in the days when they had grade 13, I played this sonata for bass trombone and my mom accompanied me on the piano. She was that good of a pianist.
Douglas Burden:
My dad was a brass player and actually a trombone player. Actually, let me just get this, coming out of the tradition of the Salvation Army, which embraced the British brass band system, the bass trombone in a brass band was called a G trombone. Let me show you when. This is pitched in G. Most tenor trombones or bass trombones are pitched in B flat. And there are seven positions on a trombone. And the only way that you could reach the sixth and seventh position is this device, which is called the handle. In the Midlands of England, it was called G mit 'andle So I can barely even move it. I can't move it past there. But that's the instrument that my father played in the brass band.
Leah Roseman:
So your parents were supportive of you going into music professionally.
Douglas Burden:
Yes. Yes. We didn't have a lot of money, and what money they had left over, they were very, very generous, as I look back, on money that they could have spent on themselves, they put towards lessons, they put towards books. Yeah, they sacrificed for me and also my sisters, and I'm ever grateful for what they poured into me with that. Certainly all of the lessons that they, by their own lives, I was able to see, but also in the environment of the Salvation Army, the brass band is a very strong influence. Being around very, very good brass players at a young age, I'm a real believer in learning by osmosis. I think that's what we experienced the last three weeks with our mentorship program is that having these young fine instrumentalists sitting next to us, we can talk as much as we want, but when they sit next to you, and they see you, and they hear you perform and how you perform and how you approach, these are concepts which can't be put in words, but they are huge learning, learning moments.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So when you went to Eastman, which is a really wonderful school and very expensive, you did get support from the church. You were able to work there to help.
Douglas Burden:
Well, actually the support didn't come from the church. The support came from someone by the name of Charlie Baker, who was also in the Salvation Army. He heard me as a high school student and said, "Doug, you need to go to Eastman during the summer session and study with Emory Remington." So in the summer between my grade 12 and my grade 13 year, I went to Eastman for the six-week course and took weekly lessons with Emory Remington. If I didn't have my one-hour lesson with Remington, I was practicing, just practicing, practicing, practicing.
Douglas Burden:
At the end of that six weeks of courses in the summer session, in my final lesson, he leaned over to me, and Chief is what the students call him. He said, "Would you like to study with me?" Of course I said, "Yeah, I would love to study." He said, "Leave it with me." I didn't have to take an audition. I was given a full tuition scholarship and started. There were still expenses that had to be met, such as room and board and travel and books and that. Back then, there was a Canada student loan for students who were Canadian studying abroad. I took out loans and it worked out.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So I was thinking the summer festivals I did when I was younger, it made such a huge impact. What was that like going that first time to something like that?
Douglas Burden:
It was incredible. The broad-based ensembles that would have taken place during a normal academic year were not evident during the summer session. What was focused on the summer session was jazz. The level of the playing of the students and the arrangers and the conductors in that jazz program was just off the charts. I had never heard anything like that. The other thing was during the summer session, Emory Remington still continued to rehearse his trombone choir once every week. Students who had graduated and had jobs in orchestras suddenly in the summer were able to come back and reunite with Remington and joined the trombone choir. I could still remember those rehearsals. We had 30 trombonists in a large horseshoe. The sounds that 30 talented trombonists under the direction of Remington, I had endorphins flying up and down my spine. Just it was glorious, sounds and experiences I had never had. So just as you mentioned, they just fueled my imagination, fueled my motivation and are just treasured memories, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
So, what were you working on in that summer if it was focused on jazz? Were you learning how to improvise or were you working also working on orchestral excerpts?
Douglas Burden:
Well, the jazz element were the rehearsals and the concerts that were open to the public. I was never a jazzer. I don't call myself a jazzer. I don't improvise. I'm totally in awe of those who are able to, and also do the classical and the jazz together. So this was just, again, opening a window on my experience, which I'd heard through recordings but never live. My own personal focus in my personal practice was to prepare what Remington had asked me to do during the lessons. So that was the dichotomy, the classical and the jazz, but very, very complimentary at the same time.
Leah Roseman:
You're very well regarded as a teacher. I'm happy to hear you'll still be teaching at the University of Ottawa. Of your mentors, you've already talked about Arnold Jacobs and Mr. Remington, what do you bring of their teaching into your teaching and how has that changed over the years?
Douglas Burden:
Excellent question. Excellent question. I was forced by the early death of Emory Remington, who actually passed away very suddenly in the first semester of my studies at Eastman to still keep going and still keep learning. I was continually asking questions of the students at Eastman who had studied with Remington, and picking their brains and making the most that I could. The teacher that followed Emory Remington at Eastman was Donald Knaub, K-N-A-U-B. He was a bass trombonist. Prior to taking over the trombone studio, he was a tuba teacher, and he was a tuba teacher of two, very, very famous tuba players, Roger Bobo and Dan Perantoni. So for the tuba world, they will know those names.
Douglas Burden:
So Don Knaub was a great teacher, was a great bass trombonist, and for me, helped to fill in the nuts and bolts of the orchestral repertoire and the bass trombone solo repertoire. Studying with Arnold Jacobs was the conceptual elements. So I think my teaching has evolved through the year in a very hybrid form, taking the basic lyrical, relaxation, singing concepts of Emory Remington, to the very precise, technical aspects of Donald Knaub, and then the overall growing as an artist through Arnold Jacobs. I'd like to think that I've taken the best from each of those and apply them to my individual students for what they need.
Leah Roseman:
That must have been a terrible shock when Emory Remington died. Were you in school? Was it during the semester?
Douglas Burden:
Yes, it was. It was December 7th, 1971. It was a Friday. There was a wind ensemble concert. He was 79 years of age. And at that time, he had a studio of 25 students and he had taught right until supper time on that Friday. He went out for supper with Donald Hunsberger, the conductor of the wind ensemble, a former student of Remington's and died suddenly at supper of a heart attack. Everyone showed up for the evening concert. I was still just a freshman at the time, so I would've been in the audience, but all of my trombone buddies and everyone else were there in their formal tails. And suddenly word came around. It was just, yeah, it was cathartic. It was very, very sad, very sad.
Leah Roseman:
Mm. When you were 19, when you started at Eastman, you already had come to play in Ottawa. You got a gig here.
Douglas Burden:
Yes. What it was, I started at Eastman in September of 1971 as a freshman, first year student in the Canadian parlance. At that time, Gordon Cherry, who everyone knows in the trombone world was a master student. Gordon is from Toronto, Ontario and had the benefit of having worked with Remington for so many years. Gordon had already started playing in Ottawa when a tenor trombonist and a principal trombonist was needed. So we go turn the calendar page into 1972, but it's still my first year. This particular program came up, and it was the Liszt Piano Concerto Number One. It required a trombone section.
Douglas Burden:
The trombonist, the bass trombonist that they had been using was a freelancer from Toronto. I think that individual probably had a better series of gigs that he wanted to stay in Toronto. The second trumpet player of NACO at the time and personnel manager was Bob Oades. So Bob Oades asked Gordon Cherry, "Gordon, do you know a bass trombonist that we can hire for this concert?" Gordon Cherry, not really knowing my playing, went to Emory Remington and said, "Hey, there's a concert coming up. Do you think Doug can play the concert?" Remi said, "Sure, he can do it." And that's how it started. February of 1972.
Leah Roseman:
How far a drive is that?
Douglas Burden:
It's about a five-hour drive when the weather is good. For those of you who know the geography of our area, to drive from Rochester to New York, you drive from Rochester to Syracuse, you head north from Syracuse to Watertown. That was where the really dangerous road was because that road, Interstate 81 is in the lee of Lake Ontario. So in the middle of winter, whatever storms were brewing only picked up more moisture off the lake and dumped all the snow right there around Watertown. And then 401 and then north through Ottawa. But back then, there was not a four-lane road connecting the 401 to Ottawa. So it was a lot of driving. There was one period in my senior year, where I had numerous concerts and rehearsals at Ottawa but also a recital to prepare and rehearse in Rochester. I think it was in the span of 10 days that I did three round trips. When you look back, youth is crazy. But when you're young, you're able to do it because you can recover. You just do it.
Leah Roseman:
So actually not everyone listening will know that our orchestra is smaller. So when you said they needed a trombone section, we don't have the full complement of brass and winds that bigger symphony orchestras have.
Douglas Burden:
Certainly that was the case in the early years. Yes. It was very much a classical size orchestra, meaning pairs of woodwinds and brass without a full-time trombone section. But the irony of it is that the very first concert that the orchestra played was in the pit accompanying the National Ballet of Canada in the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet. And guess what? They needed low brass and a full complement of horns. So Colin Traquair calls it "The inconvenient truth of the National Arts Centre orchestra." Yes, on paper, those are the full-time positions. But in reality, trombones and other augmenting instruments have had to be hired from day one.
Douglas Burden:
I can remember playing one program with NACO in, I was still a student and it might have been my second or third year, but Gene Watts was playing second trombone to Gordon Cherry, and Gene Watts for many, many years was a trombonist in the Canadian Brass. And on my left was Chuck Daellenbach, the tuba player from the Canadian Brass. So these larger sections were required on a regular basis. What the orchestra found is when you have an ad hoc system of hiring people, it turns into a revolving door and there's no uniformity of sound. So that's when they tried to hire the same people over and over again. It was finally thanks to Pinchas Zukerman who said, "Enough is enough. We have to provide contracts and security and benefits." So I'm very thankful for him.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. That must have been a game changer because I don't think you had sick leave before that.
Douglas Burden:
No. Didn't have sick leave. Didn't have benefits. No dental, no medical, no glasses. We were only paid when we played. So our income went up and down like this. So when you get a contract, then you're able to move it. I remember Pinchas telling me in his earliest years, as a music director, you with orchestra went to the Middle East and to Israel on tour, right?
Leah Roseman:
I actually stayed behind with our older daughter who was a toddler, but my husband went on, yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Fair enough, fair enough. Pinchas told himself and he told the management when he got back from that tour, he said, "I'm never touring again unless I can bring trombones with me." So there was certain repertoire that he wanted to feature the orchestra with, and it was limiting to his artistic choices not having trombones. People had talked about it for a very, very long time. But as you know and I know, Pinchas would never take no for an answer. He willed it into happening. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So the contract, I was discussing this with Mark, my husband, I think it was just a page, our collective agreement when things started. Now it's a thick, thick book. What changes have you noticed in terms of our working conditions that have improved that are important over time?
Douglas Burden:
Working conditions improvement? This is a question I hadn't anticipated. Let me think.
Leah Roseman:
Maybe they've gotten worse. I don't know.
Douglas Burden:
What I think has happened is maybe situations that had slipped through the cracks previously were identified and codified and improved. I think in terms of travel, when touring, I think that has been improved greatly. The process of the auditioning process is modernized and made much more fair now than what it ever was. That is a huge positive element. The work density, I think those elements have been improved and maybe can still be improved because there were times I could remember, certainly within the string section under a previous music director where, as you mentioned earlier, we would have two or three programs in the same week. It just burned out the string players, that there was all kinds of tendonitis problems and other problems. Those I think have been addressed. Obviously pay has improved. Yeah. It is a lot better.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It's interesting to you mentioned about auditions. So since the pandemic, we have now started having our first rounds are recordings that people send in, which I applaud in that it's very expensive for people to be doing auditions, and our country so huge, it's very prohibitive. So that levels the playing field. But then again, everyone uses different recording set up. I heard there's issues with people having terrible internet and just time to upload their recordings can be an issue. Do you have any perspective on that change in our profession because it seems to be something that's here to stay?
Douglas Burden:
Well, from a conceptual point of view, I can see certainly as your preface being in the pandemic, I think that was a very, very useful thing because the first time that it was employed in a brass audition was for my position. I have purposely kept it at arm's length without getting too much in the detail because I did not in any way want to have a candidate be accused of having insider knowledge or whatever. So I rose above it. But I have heard from other colleagues who are on the committee that the bass drum audition committee having seen, actually they didn't see it, having heard that the first round, that it was a very uneven representation of the candidates. And having spoken to some candidates after the fact, they were very, very frustrated that their own abilities were not represented well by this recorded process.
Douglas Burden:
I think it has merits, but I think it also has flaws. It's not for me to decide what to do as we go on. I think that's why one of the things that I love about NACO is there is a process, and I do believe in process. No process is perfect, but it's better than nothing. I have absolute confidence in your experience and knowledge and feelings and the collective experience of everyone who was on the committee to sit down and say, "Okay, do we want to follow this? Yes or no. If we do want to follow it, what improvements have to be made? If we don't, let's go back to the old model." But you're absolutely right. For a student, traveling and hotel and meals to come to an audition where you might play 10 minutes, that's a huge investment.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So you coach university students. You must be dealing with audition preparation all the time. What kind of preparation do you do with them and what kind of advice do you give them?
Douglas Burden:
Preparation, preparation, preparation. And it's ...
Douglas Burden:
And it's learning and assimilating what it is that you need to prepare. And also trying to let them know what's behind the screen, what the Wizard of Oz is listening to on the far side of the screen. And that's why I really stress, first of all, sound. That's the most important thing, because you aren't going to be seen as an individual when you're behind the screen. Sound, intonation, rhythm. If you don't have those three, don't even bother showing up. After that then it's studying each excerpt from the inside out, not just superficially for the bass trombone, but you have to listen to at least three different recordings of the same work and have the full score in front of you and recognize where you're doubling, where you're in octaves, maybe the occasional solo moment.
Douglas Burden:
But you have to know the context so that when you do perform that very short excerpt, the person who is on the committee will be able to hear the orchestra in their ears as you are playing your single line. And without that context, I don't think you'll get past the first round, because ... And then I also stress, you have to prove that you are a musician first and a trombonist second. There are lots of trombonists and instrumentalists who it's like a dog and pony show. They are technical geniuses, but they don't say anything. It's just ... It's two dimensional, so.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
I know that I've said a lot, and that's why it takes many lessons to prepare for an audition. And then, when you're getting close to that audition, I will get very, very strict and very, very tough. And sorry. There's no way that you can touch that first note to get a pitch. You have to have it in your inner ear, and that's where your solfege and that's where you're singing comes to bear. And you've only got one chance. You have to focus it. And then you have to be able to switch gears two seconds later, five seconds later, go from Mozart to Wagner to Shostakovich to Prokofiev to Tchaikovsky.
Douglas Burden:
And you have to be able to make those musical changes because your imagination is vivid enough to create it. Going back to my first lesson with Arnold Jacobs, Arnold said, "Doug, can you imagine what the taste of a chocolate ice cream cone is?" Yeah. He said, "If you have an imagination, then you can be an artist." But he used the taste of chocolate ice cream. Yeah. So that's how I approach students that come to me for audition preparation.
Leah Roseman:
Let's talk about intonation. Violinists might know, I have 23 videos I've made about intonation pitfalls because for us, it's just our life. And I think a lot of us have perfectionistic tendencies because it's so hard to play in tune. And like the trombone, we shift. We have to change positions.
Douglas Burden:
Right.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious about that parallel, actually. So I'm curious-
Douglas Burden:
No.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have perfect pitch?
Douglas Burden:
And-
Leah Roseman:
I don't either.
Douglas Burden:
And between you and me, I'm glad that I don't have perfect pitch, because people who I played with who have perfect pitch, I can't play in tune with them, because show me an orchestra or an ensemble that has perfect pitch.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Relative pitch? Yes. But not perfect pitch.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. I find it ... It's very interesting. And I think ... As I tell my students, because I use my relative pitch, I have to be on top of intervals. You have to hear the intervals. And people who have perfect pitch, they just go with what they think they know the note is, and they can't adjust to, as you're saying, the pitch changes in a group.
Douglas Burden:
Yeah, yeah. So the technological revolution that's occurred in our lifetime ... I am a techie. I love gadgets. I love trying to stay up with techniques. And for me, tuners I've used since they came out. One of the earliest ones, and a very good one, is this KORG tuner. All right? And this has the ability to show, in a metered reading, whether you're flat or sharp, according to where you set as a pitch standard. And that's a whole other discussion, is it? And we would not go choose to be at 440. Yes. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Not really.
Douglas Burden:
It's a point of departure. With the OSM, when I was playing with them under Dutoit, they choose to have 442, but as soon as they start playing, it goes zoom, way up. All right? And so there are certain considerations for brass players and where you're going to put your tuning slide. For reed makers, oboe players and bassoonists, they have to make reads according to the pitch. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. But yes. Yes, the trombone is very, very similar to string instruments in that we don't have buttons and keys which set a particular pitch, which we might have to adjust as a performer. But for us it's the combination of the buzz that I just showed you, the wind speed and where you're going to place the slide. Temperature comes into the play, too. Fatigue comes into the play. And by having electronic devices, which are ... They are umpires without emotions.
Douglas Burden:
They will tell you if you're flat or you're sharp or you're in tune. And I like to use the equal temperament settings. And my device of choice right now is the TE tuner or the TonalEnergy tuner. And that's one of the images that you can see. It also has a metronome as part of the software. It's got a recording device. And for me, droning the pitch audibly is a very, very, very good way of doing it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Because as a bass voice, as a bass trombonist, I look at part of my job description as providing a reliable bass sound, whether it's the tonic of the chord or the fifth of the chord, occasionally the third, but usually the third is somewhere higher in this section. But something which is reliable and not going to creep up or be artificially low, because you get some bass players who think, well, to be a bass, you have to ... You end up just playing flat. Well, that's wrong. And so, yeah. Tuning is a huge, huge, huge personal element that I force upon myself, and it's important that you keep your inner ear calibrated, because often tuning in amateur groups, certainly, the loudest is the rightest. But that's not right. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So when you say playing with drones, you mean there's a drone sound and you tune against that?
Douglas Burden:
That's correct. That's correct. And that tuning app that I just showed you, the TE tuner, can generate the tone audibly, and at the same time, have the graphic representation of whether you're flat or sharp. Now, getting ... This is related, but it's an interesting sidebar. Playing a brass instrument, 50 years in NACO, but I was playing brass prior to that, degrades the ability of the ear to hear. And I have gradually lost hearing over the years, and I use hearing aids. So here they are there. And they are wonderful hearing aids. They're not cheap. They're quite expensive. But they are Bluetooth compatible. So when I'm practicing at home using this tuner, I will have the drone going into my hearing aids. No one else can hear them, but I can hear them. And then I can make sure that what I'm hearing and what I'm playing lines up. And you don't have to have hearing aids to do that, but buds will do that, or a bud. Whatever you're comfortable doing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
But that's how I really am able to prevent myself from playing too flat or too sharp, because having this device will not make you play in tune. It will show you when you're playing out of tune. And again, getting back to the song and wind, when you have a better idea of what that pitch is, then you will be able to play it. Then we talk about temperament, thirds and sevenths and ninths. We could probably talk for an hour about that because those aren't equally tempered. It changes in pitch. But when you use your ear, you can hear the untunefulness of equally tempered pitches. Again, with this device you can have three or four or five or six pitches going at the same time making chords, if you want.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah, the one I use doesn't do that, so I should check that out.
Douglas Burden:
TE tuner.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. So let's talk about endurance. I know a lot of your practicing must be to develop endurance both of your embouchure.
Douglas Burden:
Yes, yes.
Leah Roseman:
And just physically.
Douglas Burden:
Absolutely. And the other thing, I don't know whether most of your viewers of your podcast might tend to be string players. In an orchestra as a string player, please correct me if I'm wrong, basically you're playing every piece in the program almost and playing all the way through every piece. So when you get home, yes, you have to practice, but it's not for endurance, because you're actually quite tired. The function of the trombone, which we referred to earlier, there are great swaths of time, depending on the period, where we are counting rests. And all that does is our muscles atrophy. If you don't use them, you lose them. So when I get home, I have to practice. Just ask my wife. She's so happy I'm retiring I'm sick and tired of hearing a bass trombone practicing. But that's what we have to do, because we are sitting counting rests.
Douglas Burden:
We're not involved. We are watching. We're listening. We are musically engaged, but we're not physically engaged. So when you go home, yes, endurance. Endurance with flexibility. Because if you practice too hard, too long, your muscles, for lack of a better term, get brittle. They get tense, and you don't want tension in your muscle or a part of your body. So there is endurance. It has to be built up gradually. Students of mine that view this will know that I often use the example of, if you want to want to run a marathon and you've never run before, you have to learn how to walk around the block, then walk around the block two times and gradually build up. And that's how endurance is built.
Douglas Burden:
Just wishing it or suddenly imposing it upon your body, your body will rebel. And you can injure yourself very, very, very quickly. And I've known brass players that have seriously injured their embouchures. The other thing about endurance for a trombone is we are required to hold this instrument up for extended long times. So all of the strength appears to be on the left hand side of the body. And just as with a string technique, you have to keep your instrument stable in this position, whatever it happens to be. But it has to be stable because if I were to take my mouthpiece to go.
Douglas Burden:
That's not going to work. So there has to be a consistency. And that strength for trombonists, the big ... As you begin to age, and you lose the strength and flexibility of being a teenager and a young man or a young woman, tendonitis begins to set in. And to avoid tendonitis, because I've had three severe bouts of it throughout my career. And as you mentioned earlier, I was playing through tendonitis because, if I didn't play, I didn't get paid. And so what you have to do is you have to strengthen all of your body. It isn't just the left hand side, which is holding the trombone, but the muscles on the right side of your body ... Almost every muscle in your body has a left-right pairing. And they assist in stabilizing and strengthening one another. So to just do exercises on the left hand, isn't going to work. You have to do both, and you have to combine. But, yes. Endurance and strength and conditioning are essential, and it gets harder when you get older. That's just a simple fact.
Leah Roseman:
I remember once you were telling me how you had these planks that you do, that you work into your practice time.
Douglas Burden:
Okay.
Leah Roseman:
I found that fascinating.
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. When I had my last problem with tendonitis, I started going to the Active Health Institute here in Barrhaven and got some excellent physical instruction above and beyond the physiotherapy to help relieve the pain symptoms. It doesn't remove the pain. It helps the symptoms, because only time will heal. But this personal trainer gave me a whole series of exercises to do to help strengthen various parts. And planks ... Stretching is something that I do as an older person now. Free weights. Working on my elliptical for wind and endurance. But yeah, it's keeping muscles strong. Planks, yeah. There are all kinds of exercises, which I do sequentially. And the thing is to not push yourself, but to still do it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Consistency. But I guess at some point, yeah, we must have been talking in the green room or something, and it was interesting to me because as part of your breaks to give your embouchure a break, you would incorporate some of the strengthening, which I thought was brilliant.
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. And, well, thank you. It's something which I do, and I think that I'm a better player as an older person than I was as a young man, because we take for granted what can happen. And the recovery period of a young body is instantaneous, overnight almost. But that's not the case as we work our way through these decades.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So we talked a little bit about coaching students for auditions, and I know that it's more accepted now if people take drugs such as beta blockers when they're presented with a high-stakes situation. Is that a discussion you sometimes have?
Douglas Burden:
No. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, good or bad. I personally haven't looked into it. I have superficially read articles, and I don't want to come down too hard against it because I'm no expert, and I do know that everyone is different. So if it's something that an individual finds could be helpful, then I'm not going to say don't do it. Do it. From my perspective, from my personal experience with the students that I've had, I would prefer to stay as natural as possible with your body. One of the things that I tell my students is avoid stimulants. Don't drink a lot of coffee, because when you drink coffee, that's when your hand can shake. Avoid eating a snack food which has raw sugar, and your blood sugar levels will go high and you'll feel great. But what happens is they just go right off the bottom.
Douglas Burden:
What you need to have is stability, predictability. And I think everything has been given to us in our body and in on our mind, that if we are good stewards of our body and mind, they will see us through. Now, psychologically how we train our mind for these audition situations, I think it can be trained. I think it's conditioned training. It's behavioral training, but always with a very positive, dare I say, holistic approach to it, rather than an artificial way of taking care of it. That's my own thoughts.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, it concerns me too, because of course, let's say you get the job, then you're on probation for a couple of years and every rehearsal's high stakes. And if you feel like you need to take something to slow down your heart rate, that can be a scary sort of situation of dependency, I think.
Douglas Burden:
Absolutely. And one medication with which brass players do take occasionally, and I myself do, and that is Advil because what it helps to do is it helps to reduce the inflammation of muscles and joints. And particularly brass players of small mouth pieces, trumpet players and horn players, where there's a great deal of ... Not that they press, but they're just playing all the time. For example, we just finished four performances of Sleeping Beauty in three days, wasn't it? It was like Thursday, Friday, and two on Saturday. That's a three-hour opera of a lot of playing. And ... Ballet. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Ballet. Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
And brass players at the end of that stretch will pop an Extra Strength Advil before you go to bed at night to help reduce the swelling. So there I have already contradicted myself because I've introduced something. But it does work. Now, if you took an Advil every night, then that's when it's going to be a problem. Because it actually banned in some countries in Europe where you have to have a prescription for Advil. Yeah. Because-
Leah Roseman:
Interesting.
Douglas Burden:
It's not good for your liver, basically.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to see ... Oh, yeah. So just talking about this health thing and mindset, do you have a good routine for after concert wind-down so you can get enough sleep and?
Douglas Burden:
That is an excellent question, Leah. Very good. And for someone who isn't a performing professional musician, you might not have even considered that, but it is a reality. Our work, we have to be at our peak in a performance at 10:00 at night, maybe 10:15, when the biggest, loudest, most exciting part of the final piece of the concert is .that's when most people are already in bed. As a brass player, I've been told that inhaling and exhaling all of these, this large quantity of air stimulates a particular hormone in the system, plus you're hungry. And one is often ravenous when you get home. I am, because you're really pumping out a lot of sound. What we did with the Mahler 1, just incredible amount of energy. So that's where you have to make wise choices.
Douglas Burden:
I would say that in my middle career, I didn't make good choices, and I gained a lot of weight. And when you gain a lot of weight, you lose strength, you lose endurance, you lose energy. And I went on a diet, and I really ... A diet consisting of changing what I ate and also much more exercise. So when I do get home, what I will eat will be vegetables, celery, lettuce. I'm not perfect. Occasionally I will nibble on some French fries, but it's either water or a diet Coke. I know some people over the years, and I'm not going to say who or why, or point fingers will drink a little too much because it helps bring them down from the very wonderful highs that we have as performers playing great works of art. You can't help be excited. If you aren't excited, you shouldn't be there.
Douglas Burden:
So, but again, I guess one of my little mantras might be everything in moderation. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't drink. I enjoy having a beer after some concerts, but not after every concert. And with some people, I think the one beer might wear off and it comes into two beers and maybe two beers and a scotch. And then you wake up the next morning and ... I think in moderation. But.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Avoid the sweets, avoid the starches late at night. Read. That's what I do. I like watching reruns of Law and Order because they're neat stories, and often they're, they're true elements. But.
Douglas Burden:
Their true elements. But, it is a tough time of the day for us as performers. Because we're hungry, we're thirsty, we can't go to sleep, because if you go to sleep, you've got these ear worms of hearing the piece over and over. So it's, bring yourself down. Yeah. Moderation.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And when we have young children, it's extra hard.
Douglas Burden:
I have a picture of myself, oh, many years ago. And I was holding our newborn, Jennifer. And Stephanie was maybe six years of age, and I had bags under my eyes. These are years, when you have children, have them when you're young, because you go through years of sleep deprivation. There's no question. But would I change what I did? Absolutely not. They're what makes life complete. Family, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So in terms of your years in the orchestra, Franz-Paul Decker I believe, was one of your favorite conductors to work with?
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. He was so unique. He never followed any mold that I was able to predict or able to see. And with all of his gruff exterior, and he was very gruff for sure, particularly for someone who wasn't a good musician and wasn't performing. He would find that flaw and he would poke at the scab. But, I think he was still a very sensitive conductor, and an absolute musician to the core. I can remember, one favorite piece that the orchestra used to play often was the Richard Strauss, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme suite.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Douglas Burden:
Well, that is a suite from a larger work, which is an opera, pardon my German, Der Bürger als Edelmann. And we did the whole opera, as we used to do yearly an opera on stage.
Douglas Burden:
And it scored for one trumpet, one trombone, two horns, and double winds. Got a big, big base trombone part. And I remember him coming back and sitting next to me, talking about the base trombone part, because Franz-Paul Decker actually knew Richard Strauss. He actually played cards with Richard Strauss in Strauss's older age. So he was able to impart to me things being handed down, which were so revealing. And then we did some scenes, then we did a Rosenkavalier suite with him. And I think Jesse Norman was the guest for that gala. And we did the final act of Capriccio. So here he was conducting Strauss the way Strauss wanted it. And yes, he was gruff, sometimes you could never understand what his baton was doing by our very modern standards. But there was emotion coming from the baton, and not time. And so...
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
So yeah. Now, ask me whether I would want him as a music director, I think I would say no. But as a regular guest conductor, absolutely. Absolutely.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I remember, I did do... I've been playing for 27 years at this point, and I did quite a few shows with him. And he has that intensity that he could impart. And the indistinctness caused us to listen very well.
Douglas Burden:
Well, there was a pianist who used to play with us, Ralph Berscht. Do you remember him?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
He was based in Montreal. Now he's living and performing and conducting in Calgary. And if I can paraphrase what he said, he said, "Decker wasn't necessarily the best rehearser, but what his gift was, he was able to synthesize the moment in a performance. He was able to bring everything to bare. And wham! That it just happened." So it was that ability to make music of the moment, and not to try to... I won't say anything more about other conductors.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So do you have a large collection of scores? You talked about score study before.
Douglas Burden:
I started to do that as a young student. But no, I... No. I rely on digital sourcing for my scores, rather than personal purchases. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well now it's so easy.
Douglas Burden:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
It wasn't... Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
But I strongly, strongly, strongly encourage that for sure. And the scores that I did have were the scores of the Tchaikovsky symphonies. I've got those. There was a period where I went through Vaughan-Williams phase, and I bought scores for the Vaughan-Williams symphonies. I think I'm probably one of the few people in NACO who has actually listened to all of the Vaughan-Williams symphonies. Because they're a bit of an acquired taste. Yeah. You either love them or you hate them, I think.
Leah Roseman:
So your preparation time that you budget every day, does that include listening to recordings or is that separate from the actual practicing of trombone?
Douglas Burden:
That's a very good question. On a daily basis, I always try to get up very, very early. A light breakfast, stretching. And then I do my basic warmup. My listening occurs in my car. I've always transferred back into the days of LPs. I would put something on cassette and I would listen to it. In the day of the CD, when cars had CD players, I put the CD in. Now my cars don't have CD players, so I have access to the streaming services of Apple Music and other things. And I listen to it. And I actually have a device that I have in my car, which is called the buzzer. And this is all a part of the warming up. So as I'm driving, I'm...
Douglas Burden:
So I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone there.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
And quite honestly, I really don't practice orchestra repertoire at home, unless it's just the really difficult excerpts, passages. I will... It's tone, it's flexibility, high range. People think a bass trombonist can't play in the high range, eh, wrong. If you can't play the high range, you'll never win an audition. Everyone can play low, but not everyone can play high. So I've found out for me, what I have to do on a daily basis.
Douglas Burden:
I tell you, when we do have a new score, such as we've just come through with the Lizée percussion concerto, then I am practicing that like crazy. Oh, it's just so, so hard. But standard repertoire, I've played it all many, many times, so I know what to expect. And by knowing what to expect, I know what's expected of me technically. And those are the elements that I work on. And another little tidbit, which I heard long time ago from my admiration of the Chicago Symphony brass section. The principal trumpet player back then was Adolph Bud Herseth. And I remember reading something and he said, in terms of his own practice, if they're performing Moller on stage one week, when he is at home practicing, he's practicing Mozart. When he's performing Mozart on stage with the orchestra, he's practicing Mahler. Not that he actually practices those pieces, but the styles associated with them. Okay? So they're always practicing the opposites. And they end up averaging out.
Leah Roseman:
That's great. Yeah. I do a little bit of that too. But I'm curious, is there beautiful repertoire that you play, or arrangements of things? I imagine it's a lot of technical drills, but do you play Bach Cello Suites?
Douglas Burden:
I do. Yes. Over and over and over and over again. Yes. Now, having said that, I do the Bach suites one through five, and I skip the sixth, because the sixth is written for... I think it's a five strings cello, and I think it's tuned higher. And for the bass trombone tessitura, it's just a little too frustrating because you're really up there. But yes, Bach is my... I love Bach.
Douglas Burden:
It's great that you mentioned that because in my first lessons with Remington, in that summer session, he introduced me to the Cello Suites of Bach. Now, keep in mind that that was the early 1970s. And Emory Remington was totally over the moon with Pablo Casals, and the way Pablo Casals played those Bach suites. And I have to admit that I tend to lean towards that romantic interpretation of these Bach suites. But the wonderful thing about Bach, and you would know much more than I would, is so many great cellists through these past decades, bring their own vision of what Bach should sound like. Janos Starker, who was a regular soloist with NACO in the early years. His Bach Cello Suites sound nothing like Casals. Do they?
Douglas Burden:
Yeah. But yes, I will start the prelude of the first suite, and go through first suite all the way through to the fifth, and then back to the... And I'll do that. Yes. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So do you also play opera arias, or songs?
Douglas Burden:
Opera? No. I love opera, and I do know that there are many, many brass players that will play opera arias. And I know Arnold Jacobs used to do that. He used to do arias from Madama Butterfly, and just revel in it. My melodic element and source comes from the Bordogni, and similar vocalises,. And also, the churches that we've attended, I will often play solos during the offertory. So my melodies tend to be more hymn based, and gospel song based. And there's a wonderful, vast treasure of arrangements of that, that I've accumulated over the years and perform. So that's kind of where I tend to go for my melody. But my Bach, it defeats my musical soul for sure. Yeah. I just love Bach.
Leah Roseman:
We talked earlier about being in the moment and that when you're practicing, you want to be thinking that you're performing and you're feeling the music. But when we're practicing, we're also problem solving. So I always find that something that I'm teaching, is you have to have performance mode and practice mode. So that when you decide you're in performance mode, you practice just playing, as though for someone. You know what I mean? So that it's separate from stopping and fixing things, and worrying about what just happened.
Douglas Burden:
Okay. That's a very good question. And I need to break it down before I come up with an answer. Because I think at this stage of my career, what I tend to do is look at the passage that is giving me problems. And I've also adopted the philosophy that if you have a problem once, it's going to happen again, because your musical instincts have led you to that moment. Whether it's an interval what you're anticipating, but the composer said, "No, I'm going to fool you. I'm going to go here and you want to go there," or the rhythm something. So I will sit back and cerebrally analyze what that problem was. Maybe buzz it, sing it, and then go right to it, but slowly. But it's with this... for me taking away the word practice, and inserting perform, because when I expect a performance from myself, then my awareness is elevated and I'm in the moment.
Douglas Burden:
Yes, there are, and will be, some technical passages, which you do have to, in the brass world, and I don't whether with your instrument, where you have to wood shed it. Which you have to do by rote, by memory. And yes, those elements happen. For example, the storm scene in William Tell, because it's not chromatic. It sounds chromatic, but it's not. So yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah,
Douglas Burden:
But trombonists tend not to have those challenging passages, which you as a violinist have on a regular basis, numerous times on every page. So I don't think that I'm... That's how I approach my challenges. Yours are different. You would obviously have a different approach for sure.
Leah Roseman:
So as a mentor, as a teacher at a university, what kind of advice do you give people? I mean, the landscape is changing certainly, in the orchestra business. I think there's maybe less security, fewer jobs than there used to be. What kind of perspectives do you give them on the kind of skills they should bring, and expectations?
Douglas Burden:
First of all, I don't encourage students to become performance majors at a university level, except with rare exceptions. And that's because of what you just said, there are fewer and fewer jobs. And the jobs that are out there, most of which don't pay very, very well. And the benefits are okay. South of the border in the States, the pension that the AFM have, is nonexistent. So, if you are considering being a professional performer and you want to become a performance major, I know what my wife and I do, and I've done it three or four times with high school students, gifted high school students who really want to be performance majors. I say, "Okay. Come on over, we'll have coffee and tea. And bring your parents."
Douglas Burden:
And we'll sit around the dining room table, and I will present them... I will take the rose colored glasses off and say, "This is the reality of your chances of winning an audition." And paint the bleakest picture of reality that I can, so that they're going into it with that knowledge. Wendy, on the other hand, will then say, "You have a future and it's not going to be in isolation. You will end up with a partner. This is what your partner has to expect if you want your relationship to last." And she won't mince any words. And then we'll say, "What are your questions?" And the parents are there, and say, "You realize what costs are involved?" Canadian universities benefit from great subsidization from government levels to reduce tuition costs. And there are many, many fine programs in Canada, for sure.
Douglas Burden:
However, there's this pull and allure of great teaching and great experiences in the wonderful conservatories, and schools, and universities south of the border. But with that comes a huge economical cost. And to the parents, to those students, those are risks that you have to be willing to take, and you know the risks upfront. And if having been told, and are you familiar with them, if you still want to, then I will say, "I will put every bit of support and energy behind you that I can. But remember, you are the one that makes the sound. I can't do it for you. I can point you in the right direction, try to make sure that I don't do any harm, but you're the one that still has to do it."
Douglas Burden:
So it's... And yes, there are lots of students of mine that haven't made it into an orchestra, but that's not unusual. But I also, once they are in the educational system, I try to encourage them to become as versatile on so many things. Don't just be a bass trombonist. Tenor trombone, contrabass trombone, arranging, conducting.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Douglas Burden:
Having your own small studio of teaching. Getting out into the community. If being a high school music teacher is something that interests you, then by all means, but that's a tough job. But having the versatility and a wide array of skill sets, will enable people to still have a very fulfilling career in music. It might not be in a symphony orchestra, but they can still be performing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for your time today, and sharing your perspectives. Yeah. Just wonderful to talk to you.
Douglas Burden:
Thank you for asking such thoughtful questions. And I hope that those who are watching the podcast will be able to gain some sense of what it's like to live in the back row of an orchestra. And after 50 years, it's been such a pleasure and an honor to play with this orchestra. And I am sorry to leave, but life is short, and there are a few other things that I want to do other than what I've been able to enjoy so much, and have such happy memories with NACO. And with colleagues such as yourself, because it comes down to the people you work with, and that's what makes NACO so special. It's having friends and colleagues such as yourself.
Leah Roseman:
My life is so enriched by getting to know these incredibly inspiring creative guests and their perspectives on their lives in music. Please follow this podcast and sign up for my podcast newsletter to get sneak peeks for upcoming guests, and find out about newly published transcripts.
