I am a trumpet player…

I have been playing trumpet since I was 7. I went to a music magnet elementary school in Houston, Texas. I ended up losing interest in early high school and picked it up again when I moved to New York. I have been playing for over 15 years now total. I am a student of jazz and listen to hours and hours of it in the studio and around New York City. The instrument is an ancient one, from the stories of the walls of Jericho to the trumpets found inside the tomb of Tutankhamen, the sound of a trumpet has been embedded in culture for millennia. Recently its construction was mastered in brass, but not even Mozart was alive at the time of the modern trumpet. This European instrument came to the New World and was used in military marches and dance clubs, that juxtaposition eventually found its way into ragtime and jazz as we know it today. The 20th century showed trumpet as an instrument that many black men have mastered with virtuosity and finesse musically.