Senior Thomas Cain has been playing lead trumpet in NWA’s Angry Pigeon Music Collective (APMC) for three years. He picked up the trumpet in fifth grade, playing tunes such as “Hot Cross Buns” in his elementary school band. He continued with the trumpet when he joined NWA in sixth grade. By the time Cain joined the APMC, he had five years’ worth of trumpet experience under his belt.
But in junior year, when Cain first started taking lessons outside of school, he learned that he was playing with poor technique. The news came as a rude shock.
“So gosh, that’s six years I’d been playing the trumpet, and I got told, ‘Hey, you’re playing your instrument wrong,’ said Cain.
With the help of his private teacher, Cain began painstakingly correcting his technique, while continuing to practice and play the difficult repertoire from APMC.
“It was really a struggle to figure out a way to relearn the fundamentals of playing — where I place my jaw, where I buzz, what I do with my lips,” said Cain. “My teacher said I used to smile while I played, and I needed to be frowning. So I needed to practice playing while frowning, and rethinking everything about how I played this instrument that I had made my life.”
While correcting his technique, Cain encountered another challenge: His new technique required practice before he could comfortably play high notes on the trumpet, but APMC’s repertoire sometimes called for the lead trumpet to play 30 bars of high notes in a row. Still, Cain persisted, practicing his new technique until he recovered his former range on the instrument. In fact, his range increased, with less effort on his part.
“I still need to work on my high notes, [but] they are almost purely [using my] diaphragm [now],” Cain said. “I can [play] an A or a B [above the staff] without pressing any of the buttons, just because of how much air [I’m using], and how open my jaw and tongue are. I was never doing any of that before.”
Cain sought inspiration from jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd, and admires Chet Baker’s exceptional tone on the instrument.
Next year, Cain will attend Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of the factors that helped him decide on the school was an experience he had sitting in on the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra.
“I’ve been playing in this small jazz band for the past couple of years, so I want to branch out and move into more classical orchestral tunes rather than just small, lighter standards and head charts,” said Cain. “I was listening to the [orchestra’s] full sound, and I thought, ‘I want to be a part of that.’”
