Welcome, and thanks for stopping by! I’m a freelance musician, specializing in performance on all the low brass instruments. Whether you need a trombonist (tenor or bass), tubist, or euphoniumist, I have the skills and experience to get the job done. Take a look at my Music page for additional information. A music resume can be cheerfully provided – just shoot me an email.


As much as I love all that, I’m also going to take advantage of this cyber real estate to use this site as my personal site/virtual man cave (since I don’t have one at home). I like the idea of a Log (as opposed to “Blog”), so I’ll use a little corner of it for idle musings from time to time.


By the way, the web site name “Euphiola.net” is a domain name that my wife and I came up with in 2005 when we put together our joint site. I play euphonium and she plays viola, so we combined the two words and came up with “Euphiola.” But now that she has found Facebook, she’s withdrawn her information as a music educator (violin and viola) and I’ve sort of “taken over.” Heh heh.



This site also presents other information which may be of interest, especially concerning my experience within the Army band program and projects I have ongoing.


Permalink Aside

As stated elsewhere on this site, Margaret allowed me to purchase a new Edwards 454E bass trombone. Oh. My. God. What a horn!

I’m a doubler, meaning I don’t play bass trombone as my main instrument. I’ve been playing only since 2005 and thus don’t have the decades of experience as I have on other instruments, namely euphonium. So it’s a little intimidating going to the Edwards factory, knowing that they’ve worked with the world’s finest players in outfitting them with world-class instruments. Joe Alessi, Dave Taylor, et. al. come to mind.

We spent better than three hours in the Edwards factory in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, and playtested almost every option available in bass trombones. I settled on a 454E (the “E” stands for “edge bracing”, which is a concept about which only the Edwards people can speak coherently). The dual-bore hand slide gave me the darker sound I was looking for, and a 9.5 inch bell (no bigger, TYVM) double-buffed, tempered, 22 gauge rose brass bell softens up the sound even more. This makes things a good fit for Harmonium Brass and it slows down my tendency to bark when I shouldn’t bark.

Both Mike and Christan at Edwards, along with Larry Bennett of Harmonium Brass who I dragged along on the trip, kicking and screaming (I kid, I kid!) went out of their way to help me find the horn that works best for me. Their patience, knowledge, and expertise is well worth the money spent and, frankly, spelled the difference between considering a Shires bass and an Edwards bass. You just don’t get that kind of personal service every day, but the Edwards people make it sound like they take great joy in outfitting people of all skill levels with the horn that works best for them.

Many thanks to Edwards and Getzen for a wonderful business model that worked very well for me. I have a horn that I suspect I’ll keep the rest of my life and I can only hope to develop enough as a bass trombone player to do this horn justice.

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