February was a very busy month for us, with just about non-stop shop visitors! In addition to the visits and concerts by Terence Blanchard and Irvin Mayfield (see our NEWS page for details), we also met Rashawn Ross from the Dave Mathews band. Rashawn is a Monette mouthpiece client, and had asked Dave to custom design a new lead mouthpiece for him. Rashawn is anxiously awaiting delivery of his first Monette trumpet!
Also visiting were Paul Lepicard, Principal Trumpet of the Orchestra Colonne Opera in Paris, France. Paul and his partner Julie visited to pick up Paul's new P1 C trumpet, and we had a wonderful visit with them! Also visiting the same day - by coincidence also flying in from Paris to pick up his AJNA Bb - was Renaud Gensane, a friend of Adam Rapa's. Adam came down from Seattle to see Renaud, and brought his star student along. Natalie Dungey is in the 4th grade and just turned 10 years old. We love her playing! As you can hear, she has been working hard and plays at a level well beyond her years. Her dad Phil is a Monette mouthpiece client, and her younger sister Faith (a french horn player!) drew beautiful pictures for us while we worked with her dad and Natalie.
Matt Sonneborn, Dave Bamonte and Manny Laureano started working on new CD project together, and used a local Portland studio for the first week of sound checks and rehearsals. Oregon Symphony symphony principal trumpet Jeff Work sat in on a few tunes as well. More on this as the project develops...
Joe Gransden came in from Atlanta and Andrea Giuffredi came in from Milano - both picking up new P3 Bb's. Joe is just finishing his latest album, produced by Kenny G. Andrea was on tour here in several states and wowed us on both his new P3 and the shop FLUMPET. How does he play those pedal notes like that???
We had a few more special visitors in February... watch the site for news of a very special new instrument built for Portland's Thara Memory. More details including a video interview with Thara discussing the challenges of advanced diabetes coming very soon...
Thanks to Mario Marino for the great translation work, and thanks to all who visited for their support of our work and for the great video clips!