Dedication: Dennis Dotson
Recording Reference: Trumpet Quasi Master
Civic Beauty is a swing duet based on Dennis Dotson’s original tune titled Civic Duty. Dennis and I have been friends since my first couple years here in Houston. We worked a lot of big band gigs together and a variety of other gigs along the way.
Dennis is most widely known for his work with the Woody Herman band.
Dedication: Jawn Glass
Recording Reference: Celebrations
Cookin’ ‘n’ Burnin’ is a double tongue duet completely in the key of C, no accidentals, modulations or chromaticism of any sort. I dedicated this duet to Jawn Glass, my good friend from Andress High School, because he was always better at double tonguing than me. He was on my mind from the moment I sat down to write it.
Cookin’ ‘n’ Burnin’ is one of the Tonalization Duets. Because the key of C is typically the easiest key for most trumpet players, I decided to make this duet very fast and difficult.
Dedication:
Recording Reference: Celebrations
Deemed as Determined is a trumpet duet based on the diminished scale. It is in twelve eight time signature, which opens the door for plenty of rhythmic variety.
The Toy Bugler is a test in what I call “tongue endurance”. For students who have never tongued consecutively for an entire piece, this duet can cause their tongues to cramp up. But keep at it! Eventually your tongue will get stronger and you won’t cramp as easy.
This is a duet I wrote to help my students learn to play triplets.
Low Tide is the first duet in the book. It is easy enough that most beginners can sight read it. It’s all whole notes and the top note in the first part is bottom space F.
I wrote all of the beginner duets in Celebrations for my son, Alex, when he was first learning to play trumpet.
Recording Reference: Celebrations
This was the duet that started it all. I composed quite a few duets when I was in high school for me and my friends to play. This is the only one that survived.
Elegy used to be available on my website as a free download. One day I received an email from a high school student in another state. He asked my permission to perform this duet at ensemble contest, but later said he couldn’t do it without a contrasting work. So I offered to write a new duet for him.
Writing that new duet brought back a lot of memories of the fun I had writing duets for my friends. So I started back up again. 101 duets later, I said “enough is enough” and published the Celebrations book.
Dedication: Mira Klinkenberg Wade
Recording Reference: Vintage Trumpet Treasures, Trumpet Quasi Master, Celebrations
Here is a traditional sarabande with a modern twist. The duet is in 5/4 time. It begins in F major but ends in F minor. In my opinion, it’s one of the most beautiful duets in the book. That’s why I included it on three of my albums.
Mira was one of my very first students. A lot of how I teach today is rooted in my experiences with my first students. They are a very big part of who I am today.
Dedication: Chris Parks
Recording Reference: Trumpet Quasi Master, Celebrations
This is one of my favorite Spider Duets. Its chord progression has a beautiful symmetry connected by a tritone.
For those who know about the Spider Duets, the “key” is stated in measures 52 – 63. All four row variations are present in this key.
Dedication:
Recording Reference: Celebrations
This is one of several of the spider duets that repeats itself, but switching parts the second time. In this case, the twelve tone row is used in its rawest form, which is one of the composition style possibilities for the spider chords.
Celebrations Trumpet Duets 