The trombone is a very special instrument. It goes back centuries, playing country dance tunes before the pomp and glamour of the Renaissance got under way.

The trombone has played a huge range of music since then, and this versatility comes with a range of voices: gentle, strident, bucolic, ceremonial, and so on.

The expressive repertoire of the trombone expanded enormously during the last century, due to the greatest cultural invention to emerge from North America: jazz.

All of this has led to a great richness of resources and options, and the happy challenge to be yourself in a new way by channelling your breath, thoughts and feelings into the warming vibrations of a trombone.

So many students and graduates of music colleges seem to have somehow lost touch with that variety and individuality, funnelling their ever-narrowing efforts into an anxious quest to reproduce yet again the immaculate blandness of the approved style.

There may be other ways of going about things.

We can talk about play. The trombone welcomes playfulness. We can talk about language. The trombone speaks volumes. We can look at what jazz was doing when it left the runway, nearly a century ago, in New Orleans.

We can try to play some improvised music.

© Paul Taylor 2009