The Joy of the Lord Trumpet Quartet

Description

The Joy of the Lord Trumpet Quartet

by Eddie Lewis

This The Joy of the Lord Trumpet Quartet composition was one of about half a dozen original pieces I began during the infamous Covid 19 lockdowns of 2020. I focused on completing this one before the others because working on this trumpet quartet helped me focus on God’s goodness. Thus the title, The Joy of the Lord!

This is an advanced level composition if you perform it at tempo. I can tell you that the parts were a lot more difficult to record for me than I had expected when I wrote them. I’m certain that the difficulty would be more of an intermediate piece if I had chosen to record it at a slower tempo.

That said, I’ve never been one of those who goes on raving about proper tempi in my compositions. If you like this piece and playing it at a slower tempo than what’s written makes it accessible to your ensemble, then I say, “go for it!” Right?

The Joy of the Lord Play-Along Video

We also have a play-along video that you can use to take the piece for a test drive. You can get to that video by clicking the following button:

Trumpet players around the world are giving us feedback about the You Play First Chair videos. They are very popular in South America and in Africa. That’s wonderful news to us because we like when people use these resources. I invested a lot of time, effort and money to make the play-along videos available.

Swing Chamber Music

Something I didn’t write about in the blog post is that I have long wanted to compose chamber music with a swing feel. In my mind, these are not jazz compositions. These are chamber music works written in the swing feel.

Yes, I understand that the composition sounds jazzy. The melodies sound jazzy and the harmonies also lean in that direction.  However, when you look at the roles of each of the parts, compositions like this The Joy of the Lord Trumpet Quartet are more like chamber music pieces.

That, by the way, is why these compositions do not sound empty. There is nothing missing in these swing styled chamber works because they are not jazz pieces. If they were jazz pieces, then there are components of jazz that are missing and you would hear that in the music.

But no, the composition is complete because I approach the composition of the music from a more classical perspective. I won’t go into the details about what that means to me, but I can tell you that it is a very real distinction. The same is true for all of my swing styled trumpet ensembles. They sound like jazz on the surface, but the compositions themselves are all chamber music works.

Here is a list of some of the other trumpet ensembles that are written in a swing style but are compositionally leaning more towards classical chamber works:

• Joy to the World (trumpet trio)
• Silent Night (trumpet trio)
• Happy Camper (trumpet quartet)
• Happy Dance of Praise (trumpet quartet)
• No Concession Blues (trumpet quartet)
• This Is the Day (trumpet quartet) This one is straight eighths but still very jazzy!
• Good Shepherd Shuffle (trumpet sextet)
• Seis Mambesos (trumpet sextet) Another straight eighth piece that still sounds jazzy.

Score Video

Here’s a score video for The Joy of the Lord. :

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