HE PLAYS HIS WAY, WHEREVER;
Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
Metro Edition
Trumpeter’s Current Gig As A Freelancer Is With The Symphony
Ryan Anthony, a virtuoso trumpeter without a full-time gig, often
checks his calendar to see what jobs he has lined up over the next
12 months.
“It looks awfully blank,” he said. “You scratch your head and kind
of hope, ‘How are we going to get through the year?’ It always seems
to work out. Things come through.”
They do indeed.
The latest “thing” will happen next Sunday when Anthony teams up with
the Winston-Salem Symphony at the Stevens Center.
He will solo in Armenian Alexander Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto in
A-flat Major (1950). The program will also include Brahms’ Variations
on a Theme by Haydn and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Robert Moody
will conduct.
Symphony fans can get a taste of Anthony’s artistry when he performs
excerpts of the Arutunian concerto Saturday at the Stevens Center, as
part of a “Saturday Nights, Live!” program. This concert, also to be
conducted by Moody, will feature jazz singer Banu Gibson and the New
Orleans Hot Jazz swinging their way through classics from the 1920s,
’30s and ’40s.
Anthony, 36, may feel a freelancer’s anxieties over the uncertainties
of future employment. But he keeps filling his schedule with enough
part-time work to enjoy what he calls “a pretty full-time career.”
Each week, for example, he commutes from his home in Memphis, Tenn.
to Winston-Salem, where he is working as a visiting instructor at
the N.C. School of the Arts until May.
He has one of most unusual jobs in orchestral music, serving as
guest principal trumpeter of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. When
I told Anthony that I’d never heard of such a position, he said,
“I haven’t either.” “It’s a dream job,” he said. “They fly me in to
do the Mahler and the Strauss, and all the big Shostakovich trumpet
works, and then I go home.”
Anthony will become the Dallas orchestra’s interim principal next
season, though he says that playing in an orchestra is “not something
I could do 100 percent all the time and make a career out of.” He has
done his share of studio recordings, for radio, television and motion
pictures. He champions tried-and-true solo fare for his instrument,
and he is getting composers to write him new works.
He went to London recently to appear on the inaugural recording
of Brass Classics, a series that will feature music performed by
principals from some of the world’s leading orchestras. On New
Year’s eve, he stood in front of the Pensacola Symphony in Florida
and soloed through one pops classic after another. He said he wants
to do something similar with the Winston-Salem Symphony after next
weekend’s concerts.
On many a Sunday, too, Anthony teams up with organist Gary Beard
at the Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis. The two released an
eclectic recording, Ryan Anthony with Gary Beard, which features
everything from “Amazing Grace” to a Carmen fantasy.
“I like the extremes that organ pushes me to do,” Anthony said. “It
makes me feel like I have to go the distance, in all directions.”
Anthony will be the first to say how “incredibly lucky” he is to be
“doing all these things at a high level.” Plum free-lance work has
come his way because he is talented, knows how to market himself and
has learned a thing or two about cultivating relationships.
The marketing part shows up on his Web site, It
has just about everything a musician might need to promote himself,
including testimonials from leading musicians. One of the testimonials
is from Doc Severinsen:
“He (Anthony) is not only an impeccable trumpeter but has true
artistic depth in his playing,” Severinsen says. “Also, he has
extensive exposure to audience demands and knows the importance of
communicating with them. aI feel certain he will have a great and
distinguished career as a soloist.”
And Anthony is big believer in keeping lines of communication open
with, say, a conductor after an engagement ends.
“A lot of musicians don’t understand that,” he said. “They just go
and play and don’t realize that there’s a personal aspect to what
we do. That means getting to know somebody – not just on the podium
but off of it.” About two years ago, Anthony gave up one of the most
coveted permanent jobs in classical music – membership in the Canadian
Brass, probably the most popular quintet of its kind in the world. He
had been with the group for three years.
“To be honest, it was about 250 days a year on the road,” Anthony
said. “Once my 2-year-old (son Rowan) got old enough to say,
‘Daddy, don’t go,’ the pleasures of being on the road were quickly
diminishing.”
Anthony said he now controls his schedule a lot more than it used to
control him. That’s become even more important to Anthony, as his wife,
Niki, also gave birth to a daughter, Lili, now four months old.
The greater flexibility has afforded Anthony opportunities to do the
two things he said he loves most – perform chamber music or solo with
an orchestra.
As for the Arutunian concerto, Robert Simon conducted it a few
years ago with the Piedmont Wind Symphony. (Arturo Sandoval was the
soloist.) In the program notes for that performance, the concerto is
described as “a standard of the trumpet repertory.”
“Arutunian’s style makes use of Armenian folk elements, is rather
accessible and often explores the tension between classical and
romantic procedures,” the notes say.
Anthony described the concerto as one of favorites. The piece’s
beautiful, slow melodic lines come off well on his instrument,
he said. And he likes exploiting all the technically demanding,
fanfare-like passages.
“It allows me, as a performer, to take the audience through different
styles, different sounds and colors that the trumpet can do,” Anthony
said. “I have a lot of fun with it. I think that translates to the
audience.”