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In this episode, James Newcomb is joined by Brian Neal, longtime trumpeter with the Dallas Brass and Professor of Trumpet at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music.

Together, they explore what lies beyond technical mastery in music—why virtuosity alone is not enough, and how true musical communication depends on vulnerability, context, and shared human experience.

Drawing from performance, pedagogy, and decades on stage, the conversation examines how music conveys meaning words cannot, and why the highest form of musicianship is connection, not display.

Resources mentioned:

Brian Neal's Website: https://briannealtrumpet.com

Dallas Brass: https://www.dallasbrass.com

Brian Neal’s Concertante - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLTQjr4_u7M

jamesdnewcomb.com

Music communicates that which mere words cannot.

It bypasses explanation and moves straight to experience.

In this episode, we examine why impeccable technique alone is impressive on the surface, yet ultimately inadequate in connecting with an audience.

We'll discuss how vulnerability and suffering creates true virtuosity and what it actually means to engage with the cosmos and through the wonders of sound.

I'm James Newcombe, and that's what I meant to say.

A mentor of mine once said that if we could express in words what we could with music, then there would be no need for music.

But the music just expresses those emotions.

It brings out things in us.

It brings us closer to what we call reality that you just can't do with other forms of communication such as words, verbal, non verbal communication, hand gestures, et cetera.

It's just.

It's a very distinct and very special craft of which is music.

And so I wanted to use this time that we have on the podcast to talk about what is it about music that can make us relatable to our audience?

And to that end, we have on the call with us Brian.

Neal.

Brian is the professor of trumpet at the Lamont School of Music in Denver, Colorado, the University of Denver.

He's also a longtime member of the world famous Dallas Brass.

You've also seen on this podcast that I did an interview with Juan Berrios, who's the French horn player for the Dallas Brass.

Wonderful guy, great player.

And Brian is just exceptional in his own right.

He's also, hands down, the best Benny Goodman impersonator on the piccolo trumpet I've ever heard in my life, hands down.

So, Brian, welcome to the show, man.

All right, thank you, James.

Good to be here.

Yeah.

And I love the subject that you've decided to talk about because it's something that I hold is very high, important, important in being a musician.

It is.

And it's so easy to just get wrapped up in.

Let's say that we're doing something really technically challenging and we take the time to master it.

And we can get to a point where it's, I can play this and I'm gonna.

Now I'm gonna show it off to my friends, or I'm gonna show it off on the stage.

And that has.

It's just very limited in how.

In its efficacy, it gives a, like, a momentary satisfaction of, wow, I can do this.

Look how fast I can play, look how high I can play craft specific to the trumpet.

But there's got to be something more to it than that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it certainly has Its place that, that virtuosic showing of what you can do on the instrument.

It's very exciting, the audience watching an acrobat or someone doing something very impressive.

And there's a place for that.

And I would think the folks that are good at that would also say that perhaps on a higher level and more of, more important is the.

What music's all about, really, which is sharing emotions.

Like you said earlier, which I think is.

It was beautifully said and it reminded me of when I was in college.

There was a class that.

It was my favorite class.

It was.

The teacher was Robert Abramson and he let anyone come into the class, whether they were enrolled or not.

And people would come in, they would play a piece that they're working on and he would, he would then proceed to take the piece apart, so to speak, and find what the inner workings are of the piece that brought out the music, whether it's telling a story or showing a dance or bringing some kind of visceral, emotional connection to the piece.

And that, and that's what really, I think, opened my eyes to this world of that.

This is more than just playing the notes.

Like you said, this is about.

We all know it inside.

That's why we're musicians.

We know that there's something there and that's why we feel, like you said earlier, that this is something you've done for your life and you don't see yourself doing anything else.

So we know it's there and now it's a matter of finding it and connecting with it.

Yeah.

And I would say that.

I think what I, what I said is that, like, I started when I was 8 playing trumpet when I was 8 years old, and now I'm 49, so there's not a time that I can remember that I didn't play the trumpet.

And honestly, and I don't play as much as you, I don't have a gig with like a standing gig with anything like the Dallas Brass.

So I, I don't know if my full time playing days are over, but for the time being they're, they're over.

But I don't see a time that I will never be active in music, especially on the trumpet, because.

And I don't, and I don't mean to say this like I'm arrogant, but I'm good at it.

And that's why I keep doing it, because it gives me a sense of satisfaction in doing something that I put my mind to it.

And I put in the reps and put in the hours and now I can do it.

So there's that satisfaction, but there's also the.

Just.

The.

Just seeing someone's eyes light up when they see somebody.

Somebody do something that maybe they imagined they could do.

And they say, oh, this guy can.

This guy actually did the work.

And it's actually possible.

And I think when you get to a certain age where that's your motivation to practice, it's not just to show off, but to show others.

Yes, you can do this if you do the work.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's where the magic happens, isn't it?

When you're on stage in front of an audience, and you're connecting yourself, connecting with the music in such a way that.

And you look out if the lights are on, if you can see the audience, which is not always the case, that those are my favorite concerts, when I can see the audience and I'm playing and I'm connecting with what I'm feeling in the music, and there's this electricity between the two, and it's very exciting, and it's not there.

There's so many different ways to capture an audience.

And obviously, that's not the point.

That's the result.

But the point is for me to connect with the music so then the audience then can perhaps experience what I'm experiencing.

With the Dallas Brass, it's all about connect.

Connecting with the audience.

And most performers would say that as well.

That.

So we do everything we can visually to.

To connect with them.

But then musically, that's the next level.

Right, Isn't it?

When we're playing the piece.

And I'm just thinking about working with students on this.

How do.

How does one go about learning how to do this?

And certainly you have to have mastery of your instrument.

I'd say probably 80% of the time, we're working on the health of the embouchure and the fundamentals.

But then the next level, once that has been, has made some progress, is looking at the piece of music and connecting with it and being able to describe through, like you said, through notes, why I'm playing this music, why I love playing this piece of.

And one of the things that I love to do with my students is actually have them write a story out to what they're playing, words that go exactly along with every note so that they can get out of the technicality of the piece and put it to something that is not of just the notes.

And so then the phrase starts to take on a new life on its own, rather than, okay, we're going to crescendo here, to this high point, and then we're going to diminuendo and there.

I'm not saying that's the wrong way to do it, but it's a different kind of acting.

What you're describing is you're like.

You're following the script to the letter, just to use acting terms.

You're following the script to the letter, but you don't really understand the emotions that maybe the.

Whoever wrote the script.

You don't understand the emotions that.

That this writer wants to convey to the people, to.

To the audience watching the TV show.

And something that kind of bothers me is when I'm in a rehearsal of some sort, and the conductor will say, it's a lyrical piece, very moving, very beautiful the way it's written or the way it's intended to sound.

And the conductor will say, just make him cry.

That's all he'll say.

Make him cry.

How am I going to make him cry if I don't understand the context of this music?

I don't understand what is this piece?

Why was it written?

What is the time frame it was written?

And that's a lost practice, is to understand the context in which many of these pieces are written.

Like the modern orchestra.

And I'm saying things very in general terms here, but it's just like a cover band.

They're just playing Beethoven just for the sake of playing Beethoven, because Beethoven's popular.

We don't understand what was the context, what was the social scene, the political scene in which Beethoven 9 was written.

If you do some studying, you realize there was a lot of politics that Beethoven was dealing with with this piece of music.

So understanding the context behind what was written, that's what is going to make people cry, make them understand this is why this piece was written and also why it's relevant today.

Yeah, and that's our challenge as musicians is we're dealing with a purely abstract art form and we're dealing with vibrations of our instrument, just simple vibrations.

And that's where the magic happens.

I think it.

How is it possible that you put string together a set of notes of different vibrations and it travels across the space between two people and.

And the person listening perhaps feels something.

It's just, it's.

It's such an exciting, magical thing that I think is taken for granted, that we have.

We are really honored to be able to do this sort of thing to.

Yes, it's really a gift to us as well as hopefully, a gift to the listener.

It's A gift that we pass on to others that we've been given.

Yeah, yeah, you might know the answer to this.

Cause I.

And I'm just using guessing just based on the etymology of the word, but what does virtuoso mean?

You've been to college for this stuff.

What does that actually mean?

Is it Latin for virtuous?

Actually, I never thought of that.

I'm not sure about that.

But it's certainly someone.

My sense is it's someone who's mastered something, whether it's a basketball player, a cook, or someone who's brought something to the highest level of, or very high level of whatever it is that medium is that they're dealing with, so that they're free of the technicality of whatever it is, the instrument in our case, so that they can express without being impeded by the technicality of the instrument.

Yeah, very good definition.

I always think of virtuoso as like a cornet player will play the Carnival of Venice flawlessly.

You say that's a virtuoso, but I think about the time and the work and the suffering, many failures that player has endured working up to that level to play the Carnival of Venice error free, or maybe just an error here and there, but at extremely high level.

It's a virtuosic performance, but it's also.

It requires a.

Like a virtuosic lifestyle to be able to play that in such a way.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think the.

Like you said that the life, the experiences in life that we have, I think are important.

The suffering that we go through, all of these things.

Add as we mature as adults to our ability to be able to share something.

Just watched an interview recently with Anthony Hopkins.

It's on YouTube.

It's his latest.

He just wrote a memoirs or a biography.

Autobiography.

And he talks about one, what he realized early on as an actor, this ability of drawing in the audience to what.

To his character.

And I thought that was.

He said it so beautifully because I think that's what we try to do as musicians as well, is to draw in the audience to what it is that we're doing.

We could play out, like you said, with the Carnival of Venice and show this virtuosity.

It's all out here.

Or we can play a piece that's perhaps slower and softer and touching and we can feel it here and draw the audience in to what it is that we're doing so that we can share this.

This experience.

And to me, that's the highest level of.

Of what it is that we do.

When I'm playing, I've got.

I can see my body making these movements, and I'm connected also with this collection of notes that.

That have a certain feeling about them.

And then there's all this going on around us, this, the audience out there and the musicians behind me or whatever.

And that is the highest form, I believe, of what it is that we do.

And that's why I do this.

That's.

You have to have a why when you're 20?

It's so I can show off when you get to be 50, 55.

There's gotta be something more substantial than that.

We have just a couple of minutes left, but while I've got you on the call, I want to pick your brain a little bit about.

The Dallas Brass is just been around for decades, and you've been with them for decades in your own right.

But I want to know what is the process of taking just an idea that the Dallas Brass will have for maybe a program or maybe just a portion of a program?

What is the process of bringing that from idea into finished product where you're just in sync with the audience and they're drawn in?

I want to hear a little bit about that.

I would say let's just take a piece, for instance.

We were working on a piece recently, a piece by Corelli.

And the piece has the forefront, the melody that's in the forefront.

You've got the middle ground, and then you have the background.

You have these three dimensions, and a well written piece generally.

And so to recognize my role in the piece, as I go throughout the piece, I am in the forefront.

Am I in the middle or maybe in the background?

Well, there's no.

For instance, a piece like that.

There's no.

No blocking.

So it's just, we stand on stage and we play.

And so it's all about an oral experience to the audience.

And without the music stand, certainly it helps because the piece is memorized.

So we'll memorize the piece and we'll.

We'll begin to workshop it.

Essentially.

We'll take it apart.

We'll.

And we'll excel here.

We'll do.

We'll.

Rallentando here, diminuendo here.

And we just keep working through the piece.

It.

There's no set way for every piece.

Each one's gonna have its own individual process.

But I love that process.

And so if I were just to talk about the.

This piece that we're working on, the Corelli, for instance, the begin, we might do a.

Just an experimental Rallentando fermata on that note.

And then go.

We may not actually use that in the piece, but we'll try different things and eventually we'll discuss and come to what we end up with the piece.

And then that's just a short, simple example of what we might do with a simple baroque piece like that.

Other pieces might have simple blocking and choreography on stage.

So there's a lot of variety that goes in into the show, which is one of the reasons I love playing in that group.

So blocking is like movement on the stage.

Exactly.

Okay.

Movement then mirrors what's happening in the music, essentially.

Ah, okay.

So it.

So the audience has a visual experience of what's happening in the music as well as an oral experience.

Visual and audio.

Visual experience comes back to what we.

This whole conversation has been about, which is how do I draw the audience in and keep them there.

Right?

Yeah.

And often the visual is very important, particularly nowadays.

You know, people are so used to.

Yes.

Visual things that if they see a chamber group just sitting on stage behind stands, it's often a challenge for a modern day audience.

But if you get the stands away, you have the musicians turning out to the audience, playing out to the audience, then already you've got them in a different way.

Yeah, but it's so comfortable to just sit there behind the stand and save.

Do your 10 pieces and then call it a day to actually memorize something and expose yourself a little bit, that makes us vulnerable.

It gets us outside of our comfort zone.

And I'm talking about performers, but there's so much just value, there's so much satisfaction that comes with just really connecting with an audience and using that music just to communicate with them.

And I think that's an excellent word, that vulnerable, because actors talk about that as well.

If I'm not hiding behind the stand and I'm open to the audience, here I am.

This is what I'm doing.

There's a vulnerability there and that is powerful for an audience to see.

That vulnerability said.

Brian, you've given us a lot, a lot to think about in our short time together.

This is great conversation.

Thank you for interesting questions and your vulnerability.

You don't see a music stand in front of me, do you?

All right, Brian, Is it Brian neeltrumpet.com yes, all one word, Brian neeltrumpet.

Com N E A L. And also an interesting fun fact about Brian is that he used his Covid time when everyone was locked up to create a Grammy.

Was it an Emmy winning video?

Tell us about that.

Yes.

Emmy winning.

Yeah.

During COVID we had a project in mind where I wrote a piece of music for solo trumpet and orchestra.

And there was a conductor here in Miami, Alberto Bare.

We were both colleagues at the college we were working at.

I was in Alaska, he was here in Miami.

But we also had groups all around the world that we had.

We'd worked with over the years, and we had them all record parts of the piece from wherever they were, and we put it all together in this online performance.

So we had people from South America, in Spain, in Czechoslovakia and all over.

And.

And it was just came together.

It was this beautiful performance of this one of one of the pieces I wrote called Concertant.

You can find it online.

It's Musically United is the title of the performance.

Yeah, I'm going to find it.

And wherever you're watching or listening to this, I'll put it on the show notes.

It's a good video.

I've watched it.

It's very good.

These people that were performing, did they have music stands in front of them?

They did, yes.

Oh, they don't show it very clearly, but yeah, yeah, they did.

Oh, okay.

This whole conversation was for nothing.

I'm joking.

All right, Brian.

Brianneeltrumpet.com Brian, thank you for your time and for sharing just a little bit of your wisdom with us.

You bet.

My pleasure.

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Sam.