Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 30, 1995 TAG: 9510300062
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Or maybe ``Zen and the art of keeping your chops up.''
Whatever it is, trumpeter Allen Bachelder of Virginia Tech has mastered it. The Virginia Tech trumpet professor and former principal trumpet of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra will be 56 next month, but he's playing better than ever.
Before you say ``Big deal,'' check out the professional lifespan of the average symphonic brass player. It's not a pretty sight.
``Except for a small minority of brass players, it used to be that, once you hit 45 to 50, it was downhill drastically,'' said John Husser, head of Tech's music department. ``It was a BIG downhill curve.''
It was one of the hard facts of musical life. At the same moment a good string player could expect to be playing the best music of his life, members of the trumpet section started dropping like mallards on the first day of duck season.
It comes down to physiology, Bachelder said.
``Lung tissue itself becomes less flexible - it's largely a breathing problem and not so much the lip. The amount of air you can move in and out simply decreases.''
Worse, professional trumpet players are notorious for head games focused on their embouchure - the way their lips fit the horn's mouthpiece. In a job that's full of tension in the first place, players get obsessed with microscopic alterations in the mechanics of tone production. Bachelder himself has had periods of rapid heartbeat that he attributes partly to the stress of having to play perfectly time after time.
``My wife is amazed that I go through so much angst prior to a performance,'' he said.
Conductor Andre Previn calls trumpet players the ``jet fighter pilots'' of the orchestra because they're so dangerously exposed. A second violinist can get away with flubbing a run or two, but when a trumpet player makes a clam, you hear it in the back row.
``It used to be that, if you hit that 45- to 55-year-old period and you didn't resign on your own, you'd be asked to,'' said Bachelder. ``In my own case, I didn't want to wait and get asked.''
Bachelder packed it in with the RSO after the '92-'93 season, but he may have been a bit hasty. He has kept a full performance schedule since then and seems to be not only holding his own musically but actually gaining ground.
He's subbed so much with the RSO that many concertgoers don't even realize he has left the orchestra. He's in the orchestra pit for most Opera Roanoke performances. He's the principal trumpet of the New River Chamber Winds. He schedules plenty of solo recital work.
And he continues to nail the high notes with regularity. His tone is as pure and warm as it ever was. He's the Cal Ripkin of Virginia brass players.
Like the ageless Baltimore shortstop, Bachelder has learned to fight Father Time with brains, not brawn. ``As physical resources dwindle, you compensate with greater application of intelligence,'' he said.
The Minneapolis-born son of a lawyer, Bachelder had finished a degree in psychology, a year in law school, had a wife and daughter and was assistant credit manager for a trucking firm before he decided he wanted to play his horn for a living.
He entered the Eastman School of Music in 1971 and emerged three years later with a doctorate in performance and literature. After teaching for a few years at small colleges in Minnesota, Bachelder came to Tech in 1977. He became third-chair trumpeter with the RSO that same year, and took over the principal's position the following year.
That was nearly two decades ago. Bachelder credits his lessons under two legends of the brass world - tuba player Arnold Jacobs and trumpeter Adolphe Herseth, both of the Chicago Symphony - with extending his professional longevity.
It was the 75-year-old Herseth who first defied the professional trumpeter's timeline. Despite multiple heart bypass surgery this past summer, he's back at work and is scheduled to solo in the Haydn Trumpet Concerto this fall, a formerly unheard-of accomplishment.
``One of the things Bud Herseth demonstrated - and Arnold Jacobs as well - is that if a player continues really breathing well and makes it a lifelong habit, the trumpeter's professional span can be considerably increased,'' said Bachelder.
The revelation from Jacobs was mental. He says the big enemy of brass players is an obsession with the mechanics of playing, which he calls ``paralysis by analysis.'' Instead, he advises, players should just visualize the sound they want to produce - and it will come. It's not quite that easy, but that's the gist of it.
``I only wish I could combine what I know now with the physical resources I had 20 years ago,'' said Bachelder.
Bachelder next will demonstrate his continuing skill on the trumpet as part of a combined Virginia Tech/Radford University faculty recital devoted to the works of composer Paul Hindemith. With pianist Caryl Conger, he will perform one of the century's great - and most difficult - trumpet compositions, Hindemith's ``Sonata for Trumpet and Piano.''
Performances are on Tuesday at Radford's Preston Hall and Sunday in the Squires Recital Salon at Tech, with curtain time at 8 p.m. Admission is $3.
by CNB