Paul Merkelo has been principal trumpet of l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal since 1995 and has enjoyed an extensive career as a soloist, recording artist, and teacher. Paul and I sat down for this interview just prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and, while so much has since changed in our world and industry, Paul remains optimistic.
Be sure to check out Paul’s new video playing the top five orchestral trumpet excerpts as part of the ITG’s Listen and Learn program at the bottom of this interview. Enjoy!
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Can you start by telling us about your background?
I grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and I started playing at age 10. I had a wonderful first teacher — Jerry Loyet. His positive and encouraging teaching made a big impact on how I learned the instrument. Often I would bring in all of these really difficult solos and he would say, “Ok, well, you can play that, but you need to backtrack to square one,” and he’d pull out the Arban’s book and tell me to start working on the first fifty pages…. even though that bored me a lot, I realized that you couldn’t really play those difficult solos without going back to really basic stuff.
I had braces for two years from ages 12-14, which was really tough and threw a damper on my development. I contemplated quitting at that point because it was just too frustrating and painful. I talked to Ray Sasaki (my next teacher) about it and he told me, “Just stop sweating it! Stop thinking about it and just play! You’ll develop a comfort level with braces and when you get them off, you’ll adapt to that too.”
The lips and embouchure are so adaptable. We just get into habits where we think everything has to be a certain way but, actually, the beauty of it is that you can break habits. That’s what I learned in those younger years — adaptability.
Because I was I grew up near Chicago, I got to hear the Chicago Symphony a lot. Hearing the CSO was my drug — that was everything. The sound of Adolph Herseth and that brass section made me want to try and do that.
But I also grew up with another sound in my head. I had bought a record of this trumpet virtuoso named Timofei Dokschitzer. He was born in Ukraine, and because my family is Ukrainian, I made this identity or connection with him. When I heard him play, it just blew me away. He was transcribing these flute, violin, and piano pieces for trumpet that were considered unplayable. He really revolutionized the instrument. Maurice Andre was doing it on the piccolo trumpet in Paris, but Dokschitzer was doing it on the B-flat trumpet. That sound is something I still get inspired by and I think a lot of my solo playing inspiration came from his recordings whereas my orchestral playing is more from those sounds I heard from Herseth and Phil Smith growing up. So my trumpet playing life has always been split between those two worlds.
Is it difficult to go back and forth between those two worlds — solo and orchestral? How do you do that?
Yes.
I can first say, on a positive note, that one helps the other. For all of the auditions I was successful at, I was continuing to do recitals or concertos with orchestra — during the preparation auditions.
As an example, when I was auditioning in Montreal, I was in the finals for the “Ellsworth Smith” ITG solo competition. It was an important competition with a difficult repertoire list. My priority was the OSM job. So I really had to think about how to manage this. I put the solos a little bit on the back burner, but I made an effort to always keep touching them and getting a little bit better with them. I found that solo playing made me play more freely than only excerpt playing. That gave me balance. I used that as a model to bring to my excerpts. You’re completely inside that excerpt-box, but you’re able to expand out from the box and play musically and take risks.
It can be negative to do both when it starts burning your chops. If your effort to play your solo repertoire is killing your chops, that will not bode well for your orchestral playing. It’s all about balance.
I’m always thinking ahead and pre-planning all of my practice sessions. Writing out a practice journal, I have to set timers so I don’t practice more than what I planned. I have to have that restraint or discipline, even if I want to keep trying some things, so that I still sound how I want to in the rehearsals or concerts that day.
What was your education like after high school?
I went to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for one year. I wanted to go to Eastman but didn’t get in — and with good reason. There were many things I couldn’t do. Charlie Geyer and Barbara Butler were very encouraging to me. They knew I was a musical and soloistic player, but technically, I needed to work on things. So I spent that year at the University of Illinois really focusing on building those technical deficiencies. Then I re-auditioned at Eastman and got in.
I was very focused when I arrived at Eastman. No partying, only practicing listening and performing — a serious trumpet nerd.
The first year was a struggle. I hadn’t done a lot of performing so I had big nerve issues. My playing was improving a lot but I really could not perform consistently well. I remember being in tears in a lesson with Charlie and asking, “Why can’t I get the same results in public that I get in the practice room?”
He and I had a real, honest discussion about it. He talked a lot about fear — which is all this is. The coolest thing he ever said was that you have to just treat fear like any other technique on the trumpet. And the only way you can work on it is just by doing it. You have to just get out there and get on stage. Whenever there is an opportunity in a masterclass be the first to raise your hand and volunteer. If you fail? Good! Failure is subjective anyway, but if it doesn’t go how you plan, you’re going to learn so much and so quickly.
So that’s what I did. He would give me the hardest etudes and excerpts — the things I was most scared about — and he would make me perform those pieces. So I “failed” a lot — but we were performing every week in masterclass and it just strengthened me. I’d be upset if it didn’t go well, but I’d go to the practice room and make some adjustments, and have another shot to look forward to next week. I learned to ask myself, “how am I going to manifest these weaknesses and turn them into strengths?”
I always made an effort to write down my strengths and weaknesses in a journal. The more I wrote it down, the more it crystallized in my mind and I knew that I could really bank on certain strengths.
Beyond studying with Charlie and hearing the CSO and New York Philharmonic as a kid, those solo classes were just solid gold for me and my development. I got over the fear and I learned how to deal with my nerves. It was a bumpy ride, but every week I got measurably better.
What was your audition journey from Eastman and beyond?
During September of my senior year at Eastman, I took an audition for associate principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic and I got into the finals. I remember that it was the first time in my life where it was like, “Wow… I can touch that… I’ve almost got it.”
Kurt Masur had taken all of the finalists backstage to talk to us as a group. Phil Smith and Joe Alessi were there too and it was just a very heady moment for me. He said, “You’re all great players. All of you could do this job. As you know, playing in a brass section is like being part of a family and we have to choose the person who fits in the best with our sound. Thank you all for auditioning today and good luck.”
I had played well but was pretty upset. Phil Smith came and saw me in the elevator on my way out. I didn’t really want to talk to him because I was upset, but he said, “Paul, just keep going. You’re doing great. Just keep going.” That was so good for me to hear him say that and I continued working on my playing.
Prior to that, I had taken only one audition — the sub-list audition for the Rochester Philharmonic.
The next audition I took was for principal trumpet of the New Orleans Symphony. It was about two or three weeks later. It wasn’t really on my radar because I was so focused on New York. I was preparing for it but it just wasn’t the one I wanted. But I had this feeling when I went down there, even as I boarded the plane, that everything was going to work out. My playing felt easy and I was looking forward to getting out there again and just doing it. I needed to get over the New York audition because it had taken a bit of an emotional toll on me. I went down there and just kept telling myself through all the rounds, “Make music. Sing. Make Music.”
I had been so stressed about playing perfectly in New York that I didn’t play very musically. So in New Orleans, I did. It was all about phrasing and making things sound easy and beautiful. I wound up winning the job.
I wasn’t finished with school yet but I wanted to find a way to finish the degree. I went back and forth that year. I played one full season with the New Orleans Symphony and then they went bankrupt.
It was actually lucky timing — New World Symphony had a vacancy in their trumpet section and had heard about my situation. So I went down and auditioned for MTT and he offered me a spot. While I was down there, the Savannah Symphony had a position for co-principal trumpet open at the same time. The conductor actually drove down and I played an audition for him in a friend’s apartment where I was staying and I got offered that job too.
So I had New World and Savannah, and New Orleans was starting to re-organize as the Louisiana Philharmonic. I basically had three jobs and I chose New World. I felt that I needed a little more schooling and exposure to great conductors and I just needed more time to practice and get ready for bigger auditions. It was tough leaving New Orleans, I still have many fond memories from my time there.
After that year at New World, I won principal trumpet of the Rochester Philharmonic and moved back up there.
I got into the finals for principal in Pittsburgh around the same time and Lorin Maazel ended up inviting me on all of their tours for the next two or three years. New World didn’t have a summer season and the RPO’s summer season was very short. Pittsburgh’s tours tended to be around the spring or summer, so I was very lucky to be able to get to do that.
That experience with Pittsburgh — some principal, but mostly 2nd with George Vosburgh — was a really big turning point for me. Getting to hear that quality of the PSO and knowing what that was like to play at that level, day-in and day-out, was very important for me.
I didn’t really love being back in Rochester because I felt like I was back in school in some weird way. I was the 1st trumpet, the salary was good, and the orchestra was good, but I knew I wanted to keep going.
Principal in Philly opened up. I really wanted that job and made it to the finals. It was similar to the experience of going from the New York audition to the New Orleans audition. I played really well in Philly but it didn’t work out. I was frustrated that it didn’t work out but the Montreal Symphony audition was two weeks later.
I needed something like that — in both of those circumstances — to turn the page. I was very sensitive to what I was seeing as “failures.” Why didn’t I get it? What didn’t I do in my preparation? But it’s not usually about that. It’s whoever fits in best on that day to the committee’s ears. And the committee is a subjective conversation. I’m on many committees now and hear many auditions and that’s really the reality of it. It’s not that someone was “the BEST player.”
There can be several candidates that can do the job, in the end, you just have to keep making adjustments and stay positive until things work out.
A question from an Audition Playbook Discussion Group member on the topic of committees: Do audition panels actually have an objective process towards auditions? For example, after hearing 2-3 rounds before lunchtime, does the 4th round right before lunch break result in fewer musicians advancing because of “hanger?”
I really don’t want to believe that’s the case. Of course we all are a little distracted at the end of a long day, but the goal of it all really is to hire somebody. The question is like this… if we’re hangry or tired, are any of us going to give less in the parts we have to play in the concert or rehearsal tonight? No, we’re still going to play well. So, the people behind the screen, we’re committed to hearing the best playing. For myself, I know I can get really frustrated with what I’m hearing — why didn’t they figure out their intonation? Why are they rushing? But it’s not because of the time of day or the round we’re in that would make me feel any more or less of that. I think it’s best to not overthink that. You can only control what you can control — don’t worry about anything else. Get in your zone and forget about everything else.
How would you describe your approach to the instrument?
For me, everything has to be based on the sound I hear in my head — how I want it to sound. My teachers all said something very universal to me — particularly Herseth, Smith, and Geyer — “you have to know exactly how you want it to sound before you put it to your lips.” Then, in a way, you work your fundamentals backwards from there. Always lead with your ideal sound and musical goal. Technique serves the music.
You know what the finished product is and then you have to break down your technique from there in a very rational, non-emotional way. I was a very emotional kid. If I didn’t get it, I wanted to throw my trumpet across the room. I’m also very competitive with myself, so I would feel bad that I didn’t get the technique quickly enough. But I’ve learned with age to be patient with the technique-building process. Don’t force it, don’t rush it, or you’ll block yourself from playing beautifully and musically.
When you’re too hyper-focused on the technique, one of two things will happen:
You’ll obtain the technique that you want but you’ll have forgotten the musical endgame
You double-down so much on the technique that it actually gets worse.
Number two is paralysis by analysis, which everyone goes through at some point, but it’s what got me in trouble. I thought I should be able to play anything at any time and, if I couldn’t produce it, I would go home and practice after concerts and bash my face, never trusting myself enough to let it go.
Also, the technique has to always be musical and effortless. With every technical exercise, the goal is to always play easy, musical, and effortless. It might not always sound that way — especially when you first start working on that technique — but it will gradually sneak into your playing.
But also keep your technique exercises simple. If you’re about to play Zarathustra, don’t keep hacking away at the octave call in the practice room. Practice starting it. Be creative and musical. Like when we were just on tour playing Mahler 5, I’d play a long, soft beautiful version of the opening before going out — not the actual call — with the beautiful shaping of the phrase that I want. Or just simple long tones on the low C#. Then I’d gradually add articulation, etc., and then that’s it. Just going to trust that it will happen after that. Getting yourself zoned into those spots is what matters and easing in — which means you have to know your strengths and weaknesses really well and you have to know which notes are the easiest for you to produce. Don’t advance your technique too quickly.
How do you balance, recordings, recitals, tours, and teaching alongside such a huge principal job? Also, do you take time away from the horn when the season ends?
I have to go back to what I said in the beginning — which is that I’ve always played solos. Before I really fell in love with the CSO, I was only practicing cornet and trumpet solos. Orchestra playing was not on my radar for a while. The CSO came to Champaign-Urbana and played Mahler 5 when I was about 13 or 14 years old and it just changed my life. So the duality of solo and orchestral has always been there for me. When I was in New Orleans after the orchestra went bankrupt, I scheduled recitals to get myself some more income. If I played one recital or festival, someone would hear me and invite me to another, etc. So I would get all of these opportunities to play as a soloist and then go back to the orchestra, but it never seemed like a big deal until I got the job in Montreal.
When I got to Montreal, I realized quickly that it was very tough to balance that with the kind of chops I needed here. I always needed to be on my A-game. We were doing a lot of recordings and tours, it’s a different style, and our schedule with Dutoit would often-double dip, preparing big repertoire for next week while playing this week’s shows. Sometimes that was really a big head game — playing Heldenleben in the morning rehearsal and Petrushka in the evening concert. So how could I play for recitals and concerts at the same time as that? It was too tough so I really didn’t do as much solo stuff in my first few years with the OSM.
But then I really missed it so I started doing more and more. It was going fine. My first recording was “A Simple Song” back in 1998 and then MTT invited me to come back and debut a concerto with New World at Lincoln Center as part of their 10-year anniversary. Both of these made me really start to ask myself, “How can I do more of this? And how can I do it without sacrificing my job in the orchestra or burning my lip?” So I started to juggle. Wherever I saw a week with not much trumpet, I’d take it off and go play a recital somewhere, even if it meant losing money.
In the preparation for this though, I was coming home a lot after concerts and practicing from about 10:45pm until midnight. I do not recommend this.
Did that lead to the injury? What happened?
Yes. It was just really a case of doing too much.
Things were really great for about two years after that “A Simple Song” and the Lincoln Center debut. I really didn’t notice any problems or hint of an injury for the first 5-7 years I was here. And then in the early 2000s, really soon after I took the Chicago Symphony principal trumpet audition, things started to change. I was again frustrated with how that audition went — I had again made the finals but really just played too much inside that box. So I started to over-analyze my technique. I was convinced something was wrong with my technique. I considered myself a musical player so it couldn’t have been anything but technique, in my eyes.
So those sessions I had been doing late at night after concerts — which were normally for practicing solos — I changed that to time spent doubling down on my technique. I would have just come home from performing a Mahler symphony with the OSM and I’d go home and practice my technique. Chicago hadn’t hired anyone for the job so I was really thinking this was going to help me go back and win it. But I was doing a lot of fundamentals in the morning, warming up before the concert, playing the concert, and then going home after this long day and putting my technique under a magnifying glass and asking, “What’s wrong?!” What was wrong was that my chops were tired.
Going home late at night and playing solos was different. It was like I was already lathered up from the concert and the solo practice was just a continuation of that kind of playing. Getting an over-analytical and micromanaged approach to my technique really did the damage.
My technique started getting stiffer, tighter, and my chops were more and more tired. What I should have done was taken a big break — from everything — but I didn’t. I stayed in the game.
How was the injury manifesting itself?
Tightness. I developed a stutter attack. I would go to play a note and nothing would come out, especially in the low register. Something like the opening of Mahler 5 would not have come out at all. I went back to all of my teachers and asked for their help. Without fail, they all said I needed time off.
So I took a year off from the orchestra.
What did you do during that year off?
Well, I started by stopping. I took a few months and just didn’t play at all. I had never done that before! It was crazy to me! I felt like I lost who I was — and I needed to break that. And I did. I broke that — the identity of Paul as the trumpet player was broken.
So I had a crazy year of trying new things. I tried triathlons, half-marathons, I did yoga, I climbed a mountain in France, I got SCUBA-certified, just a lot of crazy stuff. As the year went on, I started thinking, “Maybe I won’t come back.” I really thought about that.
Were you thinking that because you were worried you weren’t going to get your chops back or because you were thinking maybe it wasn’t for you?
It was a combination of “this is taking too long” — especially the stutter attack — and having realized that it was kind of fun to do all of these things I had never let myself do. I mean I was always trying to go do a fun thing on tour or something — you know, like one day of hiking — but it was nothing like climbing Mont Blanc du Tacul in France.
I really think it’s a shame that it takes so many musicians something difficult like this for them to realize that you can actually have an identity outside of your instrument. We are not our playing. I wish more teachers emphasized this with their students from Day 1. How did all of this affect your teaching?
Up to that point, I honestly believe I was not a good teacher. Because I really didn’t consider myself a teacher. I would think, “This is not really what I trained to do.” I would just pick up my horn and be like, “Play it like that!” But that’s not good teaching. You have to be able to break it down to a student. In my opinion, a teacher’s responsibility is not only to have a formulaic method to apply to every student. You really have to access the individual to be successful as a teacher, working with their strengths and weaknesses. You have to be able to coax them into the direction that they need.
Teaching should be custom-tailored. There are certain non-negotiable things in technique, sound, rhythm, intonation, etc. But everyone comes to the table with a different set of skills and weaknesses and you have to figure that out with them individually.
What was coming back to work like after your year off?
Well, as I was getting to be close to coming back to work, I was considering two options: trying to get an extension for another year off or just not coming back at all. I thought I would maybe resign from the orchestra, maybe teach, I don’t know. I didn’t really have a great plan.
But things were slowly coming back in my playing and I was gaining a little more confidence in the practice room. About two years prior to all of this, I had spoken with the Analekta recording company about doing a new CD. So while I was in this year off, they contacted me and said, “Hey, we have an opening in our recording schedule. Let’s make your album.” It was about four or five months away. My immediate reaction was, of course, “No way!” But then I started thinking, if I’m going to come back, the only way I know to do it is to just get back out there. Because the practice room was getting better and better but I was really afraid of getting back out there and having a bad experience — locking up or getting a stutter attack again.
I went and played a recital in New Brunswick as part of a festival. It went pretty well. Not my best, but it went well and I had a lot of fun doing it. No one knew I was going through anything. But the success of that little recital and the happiness I felt playing well in public again gave me the courage to say yes to the album but also to maybe not come back to the orchestra ever again.
My idea was really that the album would be the last thing I ever did as a trumpet player. I’d make it and then I’d be out.
And then, because I gave myself that out, there was no more pressure. I could just swing for the fences. If this CD goes well, maybe I’ll go back to the orchestra. But if it doesn’t go well, maybe we’ll just not release it, and that’s that.
I don’t ever want to sit in my rocking chair and say, “What if?” If I am going to fail, I want to fail big but know that at least I tried. So I said yes to the project and it ended up going really well. And that’s my baroque transcriptions album which got nominated for classical album of the year by ADISQ.
As a result, I spoke with some close friends and mentors and they convinced me to go back to the orchestra, and so I did.
It was bumpy in the beginning.
We were doing Petrushka one week and there was a big miscommunication between the conductor and orchestra over which version we were doing. The trumpet part is very different between the 1911 and 1947 versions. We all had the 1911 on our stands but the conductor changed versions in the first rehearsal. It really did not go well for me. I felt really bad and thought maybe this was a mistake.
But I hung in there and kept trying. I gave my best effort and really just tried to find my playing again under big-time stress. I didn’t always have the support from some people — and that was tough. But, I believe that any issue we go through in life like that is never about you and the other person. It’s between you and you. It’s never you against somebody. If they’re affronting you or not supporting you, you have to forgive them and understand that it’s their choice and really none of your business.
So, even though it caused more problems in my life and made things a lot more difficult for me, I was not going to give in to that. It really just made me more confident. It fired me up and probably actually helped me get through it. I wasn’t nervous anymore. I would go on stage and think about the fact that there were some people around me that really wanted to see me fail — and it helped me focus. It helped my situation a lot.
It took a couple of years for things to really start to settle. Eventually, I felt that, even under a hostile situation, I could really play well. And I started to re-discover my solo playing. Despite whatever stress I sometimes felt in the orchestra, if I went and played a solo or concerto somewhere, I felt tons of support and acceptance from those audiences and musicians. It was therapeutic for me.
Sometimes, in an orchestra, a conductor imposes a certain way of playing and it’s not always the healthiest way of playing. We have to find our candy elsewhere sometimes and that’s been my solo projects.
I still love playing in the orchestra very much, but it doesn’t define me as an artist, it’s only one part of my musical life.
And how do you balance all of this with your personal life?
If I hadn’t gone through all of that with my chops, I would have never really been even open to the idea of getting married or having kids. My life has really changed a lot since then. I’ve been in the OSM for 25 years. I have enough experience finally where I can prioritize my personal life. When I go home, I don’t talk to my wife about music. We talk about our friends and what we want to do on the weekend, etc. It’s really great that I can shelve my orchestra and solo life and have a solid home life!
I do all of this because I love it. I don’t do it for the job title or the money. My main focus is the fact that I truly love to play the trumpet and music I’ve been very lucky to live my life with that and to have collaborated with so many amazing artists whom I’ve learned a great deal from.
Summer 2020:
What has your Covid-19 quarantine looked like? Have you taken time off or launched into new projects?
This time is hard for everyone. I have gone back to the basics in my practice — revisiting etude books like Charlier and Bitsch. I’m also learning new solo repertoire and trying it out on a series I started on Instagram called “Quarantine Concerts.”
Do you have any thoughts on what this means for the future of the orchestral world? What should musicians be doing to prepare themselves, if anything?
I think that now is the time to step up your digital game. Online lessons and masterclasses are the new norm.
Having high-quality microphones and good audio is critical to obtaining good results.
Also, it’s an amazing opportunity to take your playing to a higher level so PRACTICE but keep it balanced — two to three 45 minute sessions per day.
What we are missing is performing so put yourself out there on social media. Strive for your absolute best musical quality. There may be people who love what you sound like and there may be people that don’t. In the end, it doesn’t really matter as long as you are yourself and try to sing through your instrument and constantly make music!
Everything will be ok!
For more on Paul, visit paulmerkelotrumpet.com