Only James Morrison would do an international live interview during the interval of his own concert. Australia’s jazz multi-instrumentalist legend was performing at the 2012 Melbourne International Brass Festival; Sarah Willis was watching the live stream on her laptop in Berlin. They met online mid-concert, and this delightfully spontaneous conversation is the result.
Short, joyful, and very Morrison — including the story of the night he walked on stage and realised he’d forgotten his trumpet.
In this conversation
- An interval chat mid-concert, Melbourne to Berlin
- The forgotten-trumpet story
- The magic (and absurdity) of live streaming in 2012
Transcript
Auto-generated from the live stream — expect the occasional robot mishearing.
hey ah it’s so fantastic to see you it’s great to see you too and to hear you this is isn’t modern technology the most incredible thing remember the place you forgot your trumpet yes i do i i just i just have to quickly tell the people watching james came on stage took about was just about to play what was it the high-end trumpet concerto yes and he’d forgotten his trumpet it was one of the best moments here the germans didn’t really laugh very much but we thought it was very funny of all the places to do it it had to be there it had to be it had to be but um i’m sitting here and watching the live stream that tim’s doing on brass band is absolutely fabulous you had me really bopping in the practice room here and we’ve got people watching online and they’re chatting and they want to know all your secrets um you haven’t got much time here have you you’ve got to rush off and warm up for the second half well now you know i don’t warm up but i don’t think i want to play the second half soon that’s true can you can you just lean into the camera and show us your lips i’ll show me your show me mine if you’re sure that’s the nicest thing the nicest thing that’s happened to me today how do you not how do you not mangle your lip i don’t i don’t make it work that hard you don’t no no it’s it’s not that difficult um i’m using so much air to make everything work that the lips not working that hard oh i feel like air is the secret to everything in brass play it is it is and i feel like the the as i accelerate the air and make that make the sound it’s almost like the rest of me can relax he says i don’t know quite whether i can believe that hearing some of those high notes that just came out and the last the last piece but uh but it’s it’s an incredible inspiration we’ve got all these people somebody says which exercises does he do to be able to play all these highness i think the secret is don’t do any exercises and save it for the night someone once said to me what’s the best exercise i can do for you know playing fast and i said play fast and it really is true i mean the best exercise for playing jazz like that is to play a lot of jazz and so the answer to this next question from javier from spain isn’t this cool how they can just write in onto the website and chat tim set all this up really he’s incredible it says how can he change that fast from trombone to trumpet and still play the highness i guess your answer is do it often yes and the other thing is i didn’t ever really develop a trumpet or a trombone on the ship right from a very young age i developed a flexible on the show from playing a lot of instruments so i never did settle into one thing i’m still trying to decide which instrument i want to play well now comes my horn nerd question why don’t you play the french horn oh look that’s easy because it’s way too hard that’s what all our horn fans watching are agreeing with you but um but why not i do love to play i haven’t got occasion to play the board um but um you know quite frankly what it is that i grew up playing in big bands from jazz bands and it’s not an instrument you see so often in those areas you see trumpet strongholds and saxophones right so that’s what i mean why traditionally that’s what they wrote for i don’t know maybe it was what was available i mean when i first you know creating these bands it could have been anything it just happened to be those instruments we’re too nerdy i can’t improvise to save my life one day i want to come and have a go with you one day but i have to go after her really promise promise it’s not hard that is worth me getting on a plane and coming to australia i will hold you to that you heard it here online james morrison has promised to teach me how to improvise so i’m not you’re not getting out of that one um how’s it been in melbourne this week yeah here many fantastic wonderful yeah walking around the uh there’s the australian national academy of music this afternoon i can just hear it coming from rooms all these great brass guys i don’t even know who they were well they’re all online this week and we had radhavan online doing a live chat the other day he was great he was a bit bemused by it all he said are we online yet after about 10 minutes of the interview but you’re was that the bell that you have to go yes they’re calling us back to the stage okay well thank you what’s plan what’s coming up next um in the second half we have white cliff gordon as a special guest wait until you hear this it’s going to be all the trombone players out there get ready not only the trombone place i heard him yesterday he was on last night as well the guy is incredible incredible absolutely anything else you can tell us here online tell them to keep practicing tell them oh all that stuff yes and just we’re having a ball here and i don’t even know what we’re doing in the second half we’re still deciding we’re just about to go on so i’ll call it as i said we’ll see what happens well we’ll be here watching live in berlin and all these people watching online as well thank you so much for coming and talking to us and i will see you for my improvising lesson very soon okay big kiss bye oh yes he is just incredible james morrison i am in love that makes me very happy to think people around the world are watching and actually really enjoy what we’re doing makes it all worthwhile
Horn Hangouts are created by Sarah Willis of the Berlin Philharmonic. Brassbanned is a proud long-time collaborator and streaming partner.
