Broken Chops II - The Middle

Continued from "Broken Chops I - The Beginning"

Sadly, over the next decade, my embouchure got worse and worse looking. I had to shift it lower and lower due to the bad tooth. My bottom lip began curling outward and I had almost NO top lip in the mouthpiece. Despite how odd it looked, I still played fine. I even took several auditions - won some and lost some. Overall, I could still play just fine.

After I left college early (somewhat of a burn out somewhat of a fact that I couldn't get along with my instructor), I put the horn away for a year. After coming back, I seemed to take fine to it again, but the embouchure looked simply odd! This was around 1998. For the next 3 years, I made do with the odd-ball embouchure and kept on moving. I played with some great groups in the Washington DC area and would find myself practicing 30 minutes here and there. Not enough to be a strong player.

In early 2001, I heard that Marty Hackleman would be coming to DC to be the new principal horn of the National Symphony. I immediately set up monthly lessons with him. During our lessons, he started working with me to straighten out my embouchure. Sadly, September 11 2001 occurred. Iworked in the Pentagon and life got simply too busy for the horn at that point. I stopped taking lessons and floundered with an embouchure that wasn't familiar to me at all.

A year later, I went to Peter Landgren to study at the advice of Walter Lawson. Peter is a great player and one of the kindest and most humble people I've ever met and worked with. His approach to strengthening my existing embouchure was great and was rooted in his own experiences in rebuilding his embouchure after having major oral surgery not too long before our sessions.

For the next 3 years, I struggled like mad with my mixed up embouchure. I couldn't understand why some days were great and other days were absolutely horrible. Some days I could play up to high G an octave above the staff and other days I couldn't squeek out a regular high G. Apparently, this was the beginning of my downward spiral - I just didn't realize it.

At a chamber concert with a good friend, colleague, and great horn player (Damien), I went to play and literally NOTHING would come out. My corners slammed back into a hard smile the moment my horn came to my mouth and I couldn't even squeek out a note. The next day, I was fine. However, over the next year, more and more of these "no play" days crept into my playing.

Damien and I were down in Florida at the American Horn Quartet's summer camp doing some recording for the group. He and I were playing some duets and my chops just wouldn't work. It was at that point, they literally broke. I could feel my face breaking down. Kerry Thompson and Geoff Winter both stopped in and checked on me while I was practicing and they gave me some great encouragement and advice.