What Keeps Vince Dimartino Motivated to Get Better at Trumpet?

James Newcomb interview with Vince DiMartino

Originally published March 2016; republished November 2022


James Newcomb: What keeps you motivated to, to continue to grow and to continue to get better on trumpet? 


Vince Dimartino: I think some people, like myself and the curiosity of how to get better person. 


That's one thing, and then hoping to make it easier for other people to get better faster than I, than it took me , that's the teaching part of it. I just love, and I love people that have the, that attitude that they're ready to work hard, think, change, grow. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting it to change. 


And a lot of people practice. They just keep doing the same stuff and expect it to get better. But the reason things get better is cuz you don't do 'em the same way you did the day before . It's, so I think it's really important to and to be able to go visit an objective party and have 'em tell me exactly what they think you think they should do. 


And then they can either choose to take that advice and use it or. And I teach every person, like they're gonna be the best trumpet player that ever lived. I don't make a decision about that. They have to make that decision, but I want to give them as much good information as I can so that they can move on and grow and change and, and that's, otherwise why take lessons? 


What's the purpose? 


James Newcomb: Why continue to do it if you're not gonna benefit?


Vince Dimartino: And you're not gonna alter your thought. If they're gonna stay the same, don't go. It's gonna be a bad experience for both a teacher and you . So you want people to get to better, and I enjoy because I learn something and I like the challenge of listening to somebody and trying to move them forward. 


You really can't make anybody get better at all. They have to resign themselves that they need to change what they're doing. Whether it's something in rhythm, whether it's something with their sound, with their basic trumpet playing, because trumpet playing isn't music. Trumpet playing is trumpet playing. 


It's a mechanical process. It doesn't have anything to do with music. The musical instrument is here in the head. A piano doesn't play musically. It's played by somebody who is musical. But luckily for the people like me who when I took piano class, that when I touch it, it sounds like a piano, but trumpet players have to figure out how to assemble that piano and make sure that it gets more and more finely tuned. 


So it sounds like the piano we touch every day that's already put together. Otherwise, all the great music that's in their head will never reach the audience because the piano that we build with a trumpet might have strings hanging all out of it, and the pedals don't work. 


James Newcomb: I haven't heard that analogy before. How do you build a piano with a trumpet?


Vince Dimartino: 


The piano is the same as a trumpet. It's mechanical. But in the case of a trumpet player, our bodies are of the mechanical. the way we use the air, if the air is incorrect, the trumpet never will sound good. The next person picks up the same trumpet, and they sound fantastic. So we have to train whatever is trumpet to be correct, to be the correct fuel, the correct impetus to make that instrument sound its best. And the instrument again is mechanical. It's not musical. 


James Newcomb: Can you remember a time in your life where you realized, “I’m making music now. I'm not struggling with the instrument.” We all struggle with it, but can you remember a moment where you're just performing some someplace and you say, “I got this.” 


Vince Dimartino: I'll tell you, I think that's the way everybody starts. If you Think about Suzuki violin. Suzuki was a Japanese guy who started doing this in the, I don't know when he started, but I saw his crew in Eastman around 1960 and they came to the Eastman Theater. I was a music education major, so I said I should go to this because this is teaching. I want to see what this guy does with his violin players.

I went to the theater and I heard, Oh, this cellist, it was a cellos about the size of a violin or a viola. It was a tiny little cello and there was this five or six or seven year old person, and they sounded like somebody in Carnegie. 


And I said obviously they're doing something right here, and I realized that the connection between the mechanical device, the cello, and the mind of the person playing it were connected. It was going straight from there, straight through the instrument. And I thought about when I started, I had a band director and he showed me some things, but basically I just heard recordings and I tried to play like the recordings, which is what they do in Suzuki. They teach the parent to play a little bit, and they have recordings of the things, and then they play along with the recordings until they sound close to the recordings. 


And I think I kinda started that way because I started when I was 12 and by the time I was about 14 or 15 I was playing jobs with people. So I must have sounded good enough to be heard in public. I don't have any recordings of that but in a lot of ways they sounded better than what I did in college. I was not inhibited at all.

James Newcomb: Was trumpet your first instrument? 


Vince Dimartino: No, marimba. My mom found one at a garage sale and she bought it and I took lessons with the local piano teacher because it was a keyboard and they didn't have anybody who knew anything about it. But I played, I listened to recordings and I only had four recordings because I couldn't afford very many recordings, and I just played them over and. And I played along with them, and I didn't ever understand why I couldn't sound quite as good as the recordings. 


I could play parts of it, but some of them I just didn't have enough high range or I couldn't play fast enough or whatever, but I guess I tuned into the sound of those in, I like the sound of it the trumpet.

James Newcomb: All right. So you switched to the trumpet at 12 years old and you were using the Suzuki method before you even knew what that method was, weren't you? 


Vince Dimartino: Yeah. And I'm still a big believer in that teaching people to play by ear is really a good thing. 


Because people that read music as notes on a page, it's not very good for brass players because their instrument doesn't work by sight or by finger pattern. You have to be able to move. Based on what as a hearing experience. So that's why our body is involved. It's part of the mechanical working.

Now, when I started playing classical music a lot, I was reading notes and I always had worse endurance when I played classical music than I did when I played jazz. And I never quite understood that for a while until I realized that I used two different methods to play.

Those are all the right fingers for that. And almost the right pitch too. So basically there's no translation. I'm not trying to figure out how to get there because that goes along with the singing. And then when I played classical music, I was reading and transposing, doing all this stuff that was in the way of playing. 


So once I unlearned that, I started to play a lot easier on classical pieces and almost overnight it was that, much difference.

James Newcomb: So a lot of the mental work that you had to put into playing classical music was a hindrance to you for awhile.


Vince Dimartino:

I didn't use the right method. I should have used the same method that the Suzuki people used, or I should use the same method that I used for jazz, but I didn't think of it. I was so determined to play everything correctly and. The right notes and, get the perfect tuning and all of that, and which is all creditable things that you need to do. 


But the way I did it was off the mark, until I realized that I just wasn't operating correctly. 


James Newcomb: Would you say you were, like, when you're playing classical music, you're how do I say it? You're like a jazz player playing classical rather than a classical player playing classical? 


Vince Dimartino: I was a person that was translating to a different language. So in other words, I'd see C and I'd have to translate that to make it into a C on the trumpet rather than seeing, hearing a pitch, because I saw a printed representation of a pitch. So if you're seeing C and you go C, that doesn't have any pitch to it. 


Those are the right fingerings. My air was doing the right thing, the coordination is right. So you're gonna be right. That's why people teach solfège. And why it's such a good method and it should be used more, more frequently.

James Newcomb: I was speaking with your son, Gabriel, who was a featured guest on this podcast a few weeks ago, and he said that back in the day you were quite the sizzling lead player and you even played with Clark Terry for a while. So I'm interested in hearing about your time with him. 


Vince Dimartino: Clark was wonderful. He was always one of my idols that I heard in Duke Ellington records. I went to visit him at the Tonight Show when it was in New York when I was really young. He invited me and I just sat and listened to them play and that was really great. 


And before I played lead with him though, I was at the Eastman School of Music. I was the, when Lou Soloff graduated from Eastman, I came to Eastman, my high school band director. Was a great band director. We had a wonderful jazz ensemble at school and it was very interesting because some of the people were, better than others cuz they were more interested in, practicing. 


James Newcomb: The first time that I ever heard of you was in 2008, and that's when I went to the Brass Band Festival in Danville. I was in the military and I was stationed at Fort Knox, so it was just a couple of hour drive for me. Was that your idea or how exactly did that thing start? 


Vince Dimartino: It started out actually as a town band. And the town band really was started by George Foreman, who was at Center College at the time, and also now is the director of the arts center at University of Georgia. 


Danville is known as the city city of first. First post office, first this in Kentucky, and first this, first that, they wanted to have the first political rally of the 1980 Governor's Race. 


Somebody came up with the idea of doing this in Danville, because it was the city of first. They also said we need a band just like an old time band, we're gonna do it on the back of a hay wagon. And these politicians are gonna get up there and they're gonna do their stump speech and we need a town band to sit below that and play in between, make a big rally and stuff.

So George Foreman called me and he says, Look, I'm gonna do this band. And

I was supposed to be out of town so I couldn't commit to doing it. So I had one of my grad students do it. And if I'm available, then I’ll do it too.

So it actually happened out the week of the rally, my gig got canceled, but they'd already rehearsed and done everything. So I said I'm just gonna go. I wanna go and see. And there's actually a picture of the band playing at this rally, and you can see me in the picture.

I said “George, his is fantastic. I love town bands. They’re great.” And he thought I was kidding. But then the newspaper who had actually put this whole thing together, the Advocate Messenger newspaper they started getting calls and notes about the town's band, which didn't really exist. 


So people are asking about the band. Can you get a band together so we can get some concerts? The messenger will pay for it, we'll do this. So I've very rarely missed a concert since. And that's 27, 28 years ago.

James Newcomb: So this little band that started to support a political rally.

Vince Dimartino: Then we said, after a year or two of the band just doing these concerts in the park, it'd be really nice if we had a day of music, where we invited some other town bands and maybe got a fairly well known person to come. 


Maybe the newspaper helped sponsor. And then we could make a little event out of it. It'd be really fun as we had a park that had a band stand and everything. So basically George and I just of brainstormed it. I was always a good idea man and George was the kind of guy who could make it happen. 


So about three weeks later, I get a call from George. I was teaching at UK at the time, University of Kentucky. And he says, Vince, he says can you come to Danville? I said what for? He says, We're having a meeting of the Great American Brass Band Festival Commission. I said, What? What's that? I'd forgotten about it.

We were on a little trip looking for band memorabilia at a postcard show because we were crazy about bands, both of us. And he says, Yeah, don't you remember talking? I said yeah, I do remember talking about a band. He says they stopped doing this one little festival, they Harvard in town and I propose that we do a band. 


So the newspaper and the town and the county are gonna help out. We're gonna have our first great American Brass Band festival. I said, Yeah, I'll let me reschedule my students and I'll be there. Wow. So we had this meeting and the very first year I think the Empire, Yeah, the Empire Brass was there the first year. 


And the very first year we had, I think it was 17,000 people. 


James Newcomb: Gabriel was telling the story about how you recruited him to play with you and Al Vizutti and Doc Severinsen. And he was like my dad blindsided on me. So I want to hear the story from you. 


Vince Dimartino: First of all, he's more than capable of doing that. So in order to do that, I think you can't just put anybody up there, they have to be ready to do it. 


And he was definitely ready to do it. He probably didn't think so, but he was. And , it was my, my retirement party. It was four plus years ago. And so the way. The town, the band festival and the town, and everybody decided to celebrate that was to have it be the theme for the band festival. And so I got to invite people like Doc Everson and Alva uti Ys, Linderman and others who all were there and some of my favorite bands and things, and I got to play a bunch and hear them people play for me. 


And it was great. And then there was, of course, there was this big finale. And as well as my big band playing. And so in, in the finale, we needed people to play the solo parts. So I said Gabriel's a perfect person to do that. We all, I don't know how many people were in that finale. I couldn't tell you. 


There was a lot, 40 or so, or 50 former students and professional trumpet players like Docs, Everson and Alva uti and Gabriel and Al Hood. I just, I can't even name him. Rich Hillman, who was one of my very, he was my first senior recital he taught at Eastern Kentucky, and then he taught for 25 plus years at Michigan State. 


And he was here and so many others. I, and that's how Gabriel got to do it. But he was last minute, I just said, Oh yeah, Gabriel make sure you learn this because or we're gonna play this in the finale. And that's, that's about all I told him. 


He, we'd done things like that before but this was a little different cause it was, there's 40,000 people here, . So I guess I never thought about it that way. I guess he, he gave you a much different perspective than I had on it, cuz I didn't really I think of him as a almost not only as my son, but as a colleague anymore because he's such a fine player. 


When you step out of the. , you're not thinking about that part of it. You're just thinking about is this person capable of doing this and that's it. And the fact that he's my son makes it even that much better. 


James Newcomb: That had to have been a highlight for you, for the festival. Is there any other memories that sort of stick out in your mind for the festival or your career?

Vince Dimartino: I spent a great deal of time as an educator. Of course every one of those things that I did, I feel strongly about because I think traveling around and reinforcing the things that all that great teachers are doing, there's nothing better for a teacher than somebody coming in and saying you really need to do this with your sound a little better. 


And of course, the teacher smiles and because they told the student that 10 times in the last month. I think you don't go there to to do anything but to reinforce the good work that people are doing, and also give the students an exciting experience about the sound of a trumpet that they might not have heard before live. 


The first trumpet player I ever heard live was Louis Armstrong and Maynard Ferguson in the same night. And I talked to both of them. So that changed my life. I didn't know it at the time that would, but it did. And so I remembered that and I, I've always thought of my mission to teach as much more important than my mission to play. I played with the Cincinnati Pops. I've made many recordings with the Cincinnati Pops and played in Carnegie Hall with them and Radio City Music Hall all over the country on tours with them. 


I've been lucky to be play with the Boston Pops as a soloist and played a tribute to Harry James as a matter of fact with the Boston Pops. And I toured with them on some short tours too as a soloist. I’ve played with almost every military band. I played with the Marine band a few times. Matter of fact, they told me when I played that I was the first civilian soloist that they'd ever had.

Playing with the military bands is really an honor, because you're playing with people that are serving the country and in a different way maybe than on the battlefield, but the service bands provide music for people all over the country that of a quality that they might not ever hear live. There should be some arm of the government providing music at the highest level for every citizen to enjoy live. And the military bands certainly provide that.

I think your life's work isn't determined by where you are at that moment. It's determined by the the effort and the work that you put into it, which enables you to move that freely, among different places. 


James Newcomb: I love that how you say that? When you're a soloist, that's a teaching role when you're playing and you can inspire someone to maybe take a step that they maybe they've been afraid to do. And they see here's this Vince DiMartino, look at what he can do with a trumpet. Why can't I do it?


Vince Dimartino: Exactly. And Vince is not the brightest light on the block. If I can do this, what can you do? Won't it be fun to find out what you can do? But unless you give it Nth degree work, you'll never find out how good you could be. 


And that's okay if you don't, you don't have any aspirations. But if you. I said, I know I wasn't gonna be a trumpet player. I was gonna be a dentist, but I figured out that I really enjoyed practicing and playing, and I wanted to teach. I wanted to be just like my band director, who's still the greatest role model. 


I have a poster here, right? That I can show you. It's right in my office. On my 50th birthday, my band director gave me this. I don't know if you could read it. It 


That's the lineage of trumpet. He was my band director. Delio. He studied with La Fosse, who studied with Frank Can. Who studied with Arban. 


And there's his Arbin book. There's my band director. And he was every bit as much the drill sergeant as he looks. There's my band playing at the World's Fair. That's my first job at UK in 1972. 


He played trumpet really well, though I did get lessons from him. He would give me something, I'd be practicing sounding what I thought sounded pretty darn good, and he'd say, Oh boy, that sounds really good. 


And then he'd turn over about a bunch of pages in my Arban book and say “let's hear you play.” And of course, it would be something like a lip slur that I never really worked on too much. And then he'd say, “Oh gosh, that doesn't sound very good, does it?" And then he would leave. That was it. 


That's all I was gonna get from him. But he knew that I was the type of person that was saying no, I will sound good on that. And I'd practice it until I could play everything on those page. And you come back a few weeks later and go, “Hey, that's really starting to sound pretty good. Let's hear you play this page.”


And I struggled to play triple tongue on one note and the same thing you say, “Wow you really better work on that. That doesn't sound very good.” So that's how I learned to play the Arban book. That's a real teacher because he understood. Now there's other students that sat right next to me in some cases who couldn't play the tuning B flat scale and he never said anything to them. They wanted to be in band because nobody would bother them in band. You know what I mean? 


He was a fantastic band director. Our band was just an average small band, about 50 people and inside that band, about five or six people would go into music every year. That's a tremendously large percentage.


Most of the top bands in the country don't have anywhere near that many kids going into music. They're still really great bands. Way better than my high school band ever was, but it was a thing going on there. There were four people in theory class. We had a high school theory class. It was the first one in New York state that had a Regents exam. 


Cause my teacher made the exam up. The Theory teacher. She was just as demanding as he was. And she would go, “Okay, we're gonna have dictation now four part writing and I'm going to give it three times for you.” And I raised my hand. I go, “Wait a minute, there's four parts.” “Well, you'll have to listen very carefully. Here we go.”

That was it. No discussion. We had to get all four parts and three listenings.

James Newcomb: And how did you do? 


Vince Dimartino: I was pretty good at it. When I went to Eastman theory class was easy compared to my high school theory class. It was easy, but they were preparing every student for what they needed. 


Now, they didn't have one size fits all, and you had to do this or you weren't good, or you would this or that. They understood what band was for and choir, she'd say, “Vince, do you wanna be in choir?" I'd say, “No, I don't wanna sing. I don't really wanna sing.” “Do you wanna pass theory?” “I'd love to be in your choir.”


It was a different era. Let's just say that. It's a different time, and I missed those times. They were simpler times, They were more localized. Very family orientated in a sense, meaning not home families, but our family of, in that particular music program was very close and worked very hard. 


I wouldn't trade that for anything. 


James Newcomb: Things are localized now, but they're all online. All the communities are online. People ignore their neighbors. 


Vince Dimartino: They don't know it that live next door. They just know what people are saying online. And people become very bold with their lack of information. A lack of correct information. People's thoughts out there that really are not necessarily true. I don't purport that anything that I say is true. I just do the best I can to disseminate information. That people can store and hopefully use at some time in their life. 


I don't ever say that the way to do it, Or that person doesn't know what they're talking about, because I don't know where all that's coming from. And unless they insult somebody I'm fine with that.


James Newcomb: Are there any elements of technology that you think can provide a better learning experience than when you were a kid? 


Vince Dimartino: I use YouTube all the time, for good and for bad. And there's no greater invention than your ear if you choose not to use your. No technology can help you in music because music is an oral experience. So what? You have to hear it yourself. I use the video recorder almost every other day or so myself. 


For me I have my QuickTime video. I just set up new movie recording, push the button. And then I play my trumpet, play it back and go, “You thought that sounded good? It didn't, and this is why.” So I evaluate what I'm doing. 


I try to fix spots. I don't usually record whole things, but I'll record sections of things that I'm having trouble playing, for whatever reason. And then I figure out ways to get better


James Newcomb: So ow's your trumpet playing as you advance in years? Do you have the same stamina or the same range as you did 20 years ago?


Vince Dimartino: No way. But at the same, when your knowledge is there, it's any kind of learning curve, like a professional golfer. They last pretty long and up to a certain point, of course, they don't win as many tournaments anymore. Their coordination is not as good. Their stamina to just walk the course is not quite as good. And of course the younger golfers that are starting to gain the same experience surpass them. 


I love hearing all of my young friends play the trumpet. There's what could be better hearing somebody like Gabriel going through a process that I was privileged to be part of and continue to be, but at the same there are things that I do way better than I used to. 


I'm a better musician than I ever have been. I listen to some of the early recordings and things and I go, “I'm glad they didn't make too many recordings of me when I was younger.”

James Newcomb: So you can do things on the trumpet then that you can't do now, but you consider yourself a better musician now.


Vince Dimartino: Yeah. And there's some things that I sound are on that I did when I was physically stronger. Because my goals like just making my sound really even throughout the whole nature of the trumpet. When I used to play high notes, they would be always just sizzling notes. A lot of music doesn't require sizzling high notes. 


It requires high notes with a beautiful sound. And over the years, my sound has changed so that it's more even, it's more similar across the whole range of the instrument. My stamina is not quite what it used to be but I still can play a lot of the things that I've always played, which I'm thankful for. 


And I'm thankful that I was ever able to. Some of the things that I got a chance to play that maybe some people would never get a chance to play.

James Newcomb:

Vince, we're just about out of time, but I want to close just by giving you the floor, I want to let you say whatever's on your mind for young or old players.

Vince Dimartino: I think the most important part about what any person could do, especially older. Is to assist younger people, to give them good thoughts. There's nothing greater than the process of apprenticeship. It's not just taking lessons, it's really figuring out how your music fits into the world. 


And for me it's as a teacher, as an asset to a community, maybe most of the time trumpet players and other musicians but so that you have a purpose more than just your trumpet, because when your trumpet playing finishes, it's finished. When you're teaching finishes, it goes on for generations.