TromboneChat

Hello everyone!

I am thrilled to discuss the upcoming release of two new albums prominently featuring the baroque trombone. We set up an Indiegogo page to "crowdfund" the last remaining missing portion of the budget and at the same time pre-sell the albums and bonus content that we prepared. I invite you to check it out, and to support it if you are interested in this project – even the smallest donations will help ensure that we are able to bring these albums out into the world!

One of these is my solo debut album, which aims to feature the baroque trombone as a virtuosic solo instrument, and focuses on Italian music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is mostly intimate vocal solo music, with lots of attention spent on how to convey the text through playing. This repertoire demands an extreme level of subtlety and variation in sound colours, articulations and shading, and is perfect to explore the vocal kind of virtuosity of the trombone. It also includes a bit of purely instrumental music and some of my own compositions, including an entirely new Sonata for trombone and basso continuo, which I wrote in the Italian early baroque style and based on sonatas for solo violin, but aligning the writing of the solo part to the trombone idioms of the time.

The other is with my ensemble The Viadana Collective and brings together some of the biggest names in the early music world, all soloists and musicians of the highest order. We all take turns being featured in solo pieces, interspersed with some 4, 5, 6 and 8-part music. Of notable interest for trombonists, this album includes my rendition of the earliest known solo piece for trombone, Rognoni's Susanna, a crazy busy bass trombone solo. It also includes a nice trombone duet between Catherine Motuz and myself, and just overall a lot of really nice music, much of it has never been recorded before. All recorded at the ducal palatine chapel of Santa Barbara (where some of the music of Monteverdi was first heard) playing from the balconies and with the big historical organ (built 1565).

Here is the link:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/viad ... fecycle#/

And videos relating to both of the albums, a trailer for Lodovico Viadana: Sacri Concentus:




and the demo I made two years ago when first seeking funding and a label for my solo album:

Beautiful playing! Thanks for posting!

Jim Scott

Maximilien,

This is beautiful playing. I especially love your attention to ornamentation which seems (to my untrained ear) to be stylistically appropriate. It humbles me to recall how pedestrian my sackbut playing must have been back in the day (decades ago). Congratulations!

I am happy to contribute to your Indiegogo "crowdfund."

Bonne chance!

Very beautiful playing. There is something simply moving about these pieces. Thank you for the work you do to bring these pieces back to life!

An absolute delight for the ears! Happy to support the project.

Wow! That is so smooth Maximilien! The sound is fantastic.

So many questions! What temperament do you use? Or does it change depending on the piece?

What mic do you have as the spot (in the demo)? What was the main stereo pair?

Wow that sounds great! Bravo!

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 9:10 pmWhat temperament do you use? Or does it change depending on the piece?

Meantone, with pure major thirds, hence the need for the organ's subsemitones (the split sharps) that you see in the first video. Eb is pure to G, D# is pure to B... they're not the same note.

In an C18th context, temperament is often understood to provide colour/character variation between keys - basically, the simple ones have purer thirds, and then things get spicier as you get further afield - but that's absolutely not the point here.

Conceptually, quarter-comma meantone shares the same basic idea as equal temperament, which everyone was already aware of as a theoretical possibility... everything usable sounds the same. This insistence that all the usable keys have pure major thirds comes at two costs: the fifths are characteristically really quite narrow, and for keyboard instruments either you're limited to one version of each accidental (without retuning) or you have to start adding subsemitones... which eventually leads here or here. I just finished making a harpsichord with three splits per octave, so Eb/D# and G#/Ab as you saw on the Antegnati organ, plus Bb/A#.

Maximilien - nice work!

Nice!

Very, very nice!

Beautiful!

Posaunus wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 5:52 pm Maximilien,

I am happy to contribute to your Indiegogo "crowdfund."

Bonne chance!

muschem wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 8:20 pm An absolute delight for the ears! Happy to support the project.

Kbiggs wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 4:43 pmBeautiful!

Thank you for your kind words and your generous contributions!! This is super helpful!

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 9:10 pm Wow! That is so smooth Maximilien! The sound is fantastic.

So many questions! What temperament do you use? Or does it change depending on the piece?

What mic do you have as the spot (in the demo)? What was the main stereo pair?

So for tuning, we're at a=466Hz (half step higher than 440). The organs in both of these videos are tuned in 1/4-comma meantone, as ithinknot has noted, and both have split enharmonic keys for Eb/D# and G#/Ab. For the Viadana Collective's album, the composer frequently calls for both Eb and D# within the same piece, so split keys are essential. For the solo album, we are also in meantone but with instruments (organ and harpsichord) that don't have split keys, and we had to retune the Eb to D# (occasionally even the Bb to A#) for certain pieces and plan the recording schedule around which notes would be available.

1/4-comma meantone has pure major thirds across the board but the octave never closes. The fifths are a bit wonky but not nearly as much as the thirds are in equal temperament. For later music (later 17th century, and 18th century), we would use different temparements, although for a concert or recording, we typically try to settle on something that fits everything with little or no re-tuning, especially when all the music is from the same region and/or time period. For 16th and 17th century music, which is the vast majority of the playing we do, it's usually all some form of meantone tuning.

For the recording equipment on that demo, we had a pair of omnis and then the spot mike iirc was directional but off-axis from the bell, and is only there to restitute the brightness in my sound and the articulations, because that organ tends to eat up the trombone's higher overtones when you just have that elevated stereo pair. I couldn't tell more specifically, I'm really not knowledgeable about gear. I did the editing and mixing myself but not the actual recording.

You have great ears. The balance is fantastic.

Amazing stuff, Maximilien. Thanks for bringing it into the world and to our attention.

LeTromboniste wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 3:30 pm Hello everyone!
I am thrilled to discuss the upcoming release of two new albums prominently featuring the baroque trombone.

Outstanding! This is excellent news.

bitbckt wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 9:25 am Amazing stuff, Maximilien. Thanks for bringing it into the world and to our attention.

Thank you bitbckt for the support!

Hello everyone! A little update on this project. The crowdfunding effort is reaching its end, but there are still a few days to contribute for those who would like (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/viad ... rime-mie/ ).
In the meantime, I just posted this video of what will be the opening track of the solo album, which is still slated for release next fall. I hope you enjoy!