Hello and welcome to applause performances.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Amanda Rabinowitz and host of the local music podcast Shuffle.

Joining me today is a northeast Ohio musician in high demand and that's trumpeter Theresa May.

You may have heard her perform with the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra with the collective mourning a black star and at Playhouse Square with the orchestra for the Broadway series.

And Theresa recently decided to go solo and she's here to talk with me about that today.

Theresa, so great to have you here.

Thanks.

Glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Before you perform, can you talk a little bit about your set up here because you've brought two trumpets.

You have some pedals.

Talk about how you're going to do this today.

Yeah.

So I started creating music for my trumpet.

And then I also have my flugelhorn today.

Which one of the tunes I'll play today will be on flugelhorn.

And I've been doing a lot of trumpet with electronic beats that I create myself, and I also do trumpet and flugelhorn with effect pedals from earthquake devices.

Is this something you've just been experimenting with?

Definitely.

I still feel like I'm figuring things out, but along the way, some really cool things happen.

And I understand that you one one of those trumpets that you have.

Yes, I have one.

My my flugelhorn.

It's an exo flugelhorn with CS was having a raffle and all you have to do is go in and try the flugelhorn and then your name got put into a raffle a few weeks later.

Jack Chance, who plays in the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, was actually the one pulling the names and I did not even know went to the day of and he pulled my name.

So I won a really amazing sounding flugelhorn.

Well, how many people can say they've won a trumpet?

Yeah, I think the setup is really awesome and I love how you've been experimental with it.

How does it compare to what you're doing now to when you've had all this experience playing and on some.

The I think everything I'm doing now just feels really personal and it's really special to play in a collaborative band.

All the bands that I've been and I feel like has led me and helped me to create my solo music.

But this feels just really special, really close to my heart and allows me to experience and play everything that I'm feeling.

That's so great.

I can't wait to hear how this works.

So tell us about the first song you're going to perform.

Yes, the first song is called Go to the Garden.

It's by a composer named Aristides Garnett.

They composed the piece for trumpet and mixed media.

So it's me playing my B-flat trumpet and then narration to go along with it.

How cool.

Yeah.

All right, let's hear it.

Okay.

for.

Gather round.

I'm going to tell you a story.

The first person to ever truly love me once said somewhere there's a garden.

A place so calm and pure that you cannot help but be at peace.

It's gate may be trellis or stone.

It may be intimate.

Whenever I'm doing with someone, there is a garden meant for you, even if it's only in your mind.

And on that day, I began exploring, uncovering the garden in my mind.

Years passed and a handful of seedlings alongside a single bench grew into a lush landscape, a fountain the birds would drink from magnolias stretching overhead flowers bursting from every crevice, dense hedges on all sides to keep it secure, even when the world around it grew dark.

The garden remained bright and warm because I made it so.

After all, it was my garden and I filled it with beautiful things.

It was such a moving piece, and I just love hearing the trumpet up in front and center like that.

With those background sounds, it's just such a unique approach to hearing the instrument.

Yeah, it's one of my favorites to play.

Arias composed this piece, I believe it was in 2021, and I purchased a piece from them in 2022 ish, and it's one of my favorites to start program with because it's really coming.

The piece itself is about having a place of solace and of solitude that you can go that will always kind of be our safe space.

That's really important, ever.

I think, now more than ever.

So I always like to start in the place of comedy.

So for me, that's what that piece does.

For me.

It comes my physical self, it comes my mental self kind of puts me in a safe space.

I'm just happy to perform.

There was it was incredibly moving.

Theresa I know one of the reasons why you went solo is because you had a bit of a health scare last year.

You ended up in the E.R.. Yeah.

What happened?

Yeah, actually, my my partner Emmanuel and I were driving back from Cincinnati.

I performed on a friend's graduate recital at the conservatory.

And on the way back, I had an incredible amount of pain in my abdomen area.

And at first, we just thought it was not anything serious.

And then it progressively got worse.

And I was the pain just also got worse.

And we ended up going to the E.R.

on the way to Cleveland.

We were in Columbus, and I told my partner Emmanuel, that I cannot drive, so please take over and I need to get to a E.R.

like now.

And so we ended up at the E.R.

in Columbus, and that's when I finally found out I had fibroids.

And I. I didn't know anything about them until really that moment.

And it just explained a lot of my pain and energy level that I was dealing with for years prior to finding out that I had them.

Wow.

How are you doing now?

Much better.

Yeah.

I feel like a new person.

I'm no longer in constant pain.

My energy level is back.

I mean, I still drink a good amount of coffee, but otherwise my energy level is pretty, pretty good.

Again, I'm so glad.

I'm really.

Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that because that had to affect your breathing.

Yeah, Especially when you're playing the trumpet.

Yeah, exactly.

I realized now that I've had them removed, that I wasn't able to take a full amount, a full breath, which is pretty vital when you play the trumpet.

So I realized just how much harder I had to work in order to perform.

And I was performing a lot.

But now that I'm able to take a full breath, you know, without my body being super tense and stressed out and no pain, it feels like a dream now to breathe for that.

Did you have to stop performing and playing for a while?

I did.

I stopped performing after my surgery for a bit and before my my, my myomectomy to get my fibroids removed.

I also stopped performing just so I could take some time and focus on myself and my health and my mental health as well.

So glad you're recovered and back to doing what you love.

I know of that time when you were forced to slow down.

How did that affect your creativity?

Yeah, I think it allowed me to create more.

I feel like I'm definitely in a season, a season of creativity, and I'm able to create freely.

And I think, you know, at least half of that is due to the fact that I just feel so much better.

And the other half is because I actually have time to devote to myself and my own creative lanes.

That's like a whole new chapter.

Yeah, yeah, that is really great.

It must feel so good to have that full breath again and not be so exhausted.

Yes.

Yep.

Literally and figuratively.

Absolutely.

It's great to hear.

I know the next piece you're going to play is an original that you wrote, and it's called Universal Return.

Yes.

Talk a little bit about this piece.

Yes.

So I. I wrote this just last year.

I composed the beat first and then I composed the little horn part and I wrote it about returning to a part of our younger selves that often gets lost when we reach adulthood.

I think things just become so serious and, you know, for good reason for most of the time.

But I think it's really important for all of us as adults to maintain a sense of creativity and wonder.

I work with kids every week and they are the silliest beings on the planet.

And, you know, they laugh about the silliest things.

They ask a billion questions.

My youngest trumpet student is five years old and the lesson is chaotic but also amazing.

And he actually has so many questions in the 130 minute lesson.

And if we were in a world like that and just spent time, you know, laughing and playing play is really important for us adults as well, I think that we would all just feel much better.

And so I wrote a song this the song for myself as a reminder and also for all of us to remember that.

So how do you tap into your inner child?

Yes.

So by creating.

Yes.

And writing songs.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I'm excited to hear this one.

It's called Universal Return.

Thank you.

It was such a unique sound.

I just love how the trumpet and the beats kind of complemented each other.

How did you write that?

You write the beats first, and then the trumpet to it.

Yes.

I think for mostly all of the the songs that I've written so far, it always starts with the beat and then the trumpet part.

Yeah, and that's exactly how I wrote this one.

And I could really hear kind of the playfulness of the inner child.

Yeah.

Throughout the trumpet parts.

Yes.

Thank you.

Really, It really comes across sinking.

I know a couple of years ago you collaborated on a project called Afrofuturism for Spaces Gallery.

Can you talk a little bit about that concept of Afro futurism and how it affects your creativity and your process?

Yeah.

So the project was based off of a piece.

I commenced, I commissioned called Afrofuturism.

Black Lives will exist in the future, and the premise of that entire project and the piece that my colleague Shani Strickland wrote for me, she composed the whole thing.

She wrote it for a trumpet and electronics.

And so that was like right when I was getting my start with the pedals.

But that project was really about black bodies being able to exist and any and all the spaces.

And for me, it speaks, I mean, in everyday daily life.

But starting when I was in school, in academia, being one of the only black persons and black woman and in the brass department in the Trumpet Department and just feeling like I belong to exist in the space.

And I think for many of us black and brown bodies, we need to feel like that, that we can be in any space that we want to.

So creativity, creatively, I am allowing myself to do whatever I want, really, which is really freeing, especially coming from a place of like classical conservatory training where I didn't really feel like I had as much freedom as I as I wanted.

Mm hmm.

And I know in April, you have a performance spotlighting underrepresented composers.

What about that?

Yes.

So it's still in the works.

My longtime friend and collaborator, Megan Denman, she is a pianist and amazing pianist.

Whenever we have a project, always my first call.

So we are joining forces to put on a concert at Tri-C, which is where I'm on faculty there, and we are still kind of sussing out our rep.

But the one thing that we are for sure is that it will feature woman composers, nonbinary composers, black composers, and just music that you don't hear so often for trumpet and piano.

Yeah, I mean, that just goes back to what you said coming up.

As a musician, you didn't see many people like you.

Mm hmm.

And that's something you want to really have an influence on now.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

How does that tie into?

Because you mentioned teaching.

Mm hmm.

And you have a bunch of students.

Can you talk a little bit about your teaching experience and how you kind of pass what you've learned on to the generation?

Yes.

So I have about 35 students currently, and I've been teaching privately since I moved back to Cleveland after grad school.

That was 2011 or so.

And within my studio, there's still more.

I still have more boys.

Students are more male students than I do girls, students or female students.

And it's important for me to exist so all the students can see that you can look like me and be me.

And play trumpet is really important for my my other girls students to know that we can do this.

You can be out there, you can perform, even though it's kind of still a male dominated field, it's so great that they have you to look up to.

Yeah.

And how does the teaching influence your creativity?

My students are there.

I think just in me, once we start teaching and working together, I think teaching privately and teaching private trumpet lessons is a very special thing where I am able to have, you know, teacher student relationships with students from the time they're in fourth or fifth grade.

Most of the time until they graduate high school, you know, so that's eight or nine years gone through some of their, you know, adolescent times and teenage years.

And it's really special to have a relationship that long with a student.

And many of them, we become friends after they graduate.

And I can like see where they end up after high school, if they're continuing working or going off to college.

And they still keep in touch.

And it feels just really special that I can have that relationship with another person.

Have you shared any of your new style of music with them?

Some of them, yeah.

Do they like it?

They do like it.

I'm sure they're inspired by that as well.

Yeah.

They think that playing with pedal effects is really cool.

Yeah, it's such a unique approach.

The last song you're going to play for us is called Gratitude.

Can you talk a little bit about the premise of this one?

Yes.

So I, I wrote The Beat again around 20, 20, 2021.

I was saying before, how when many people in the pandemic were learning how to make bread, I was teaching myself how to make beats and garage band because it came with my new laptop.

And so I started making beats and this was one of the first beats I made.

And in 2021, I believe the horn part also I wrote that I wrote one of the bits of the horn part in 2022 or 2023, and this piece is really special to me because the the horn part that you'll hear a few times in the piece is the first thing I recorded on trumpet.

After I had my lip accident, I busted Lip and 2022, which was a crazy time because 2022 was a wild year.

I was able to perform at the International Women's Brass Conference.

I did a solo set there.

Also, one of the organizations or organizations that I co-founded, the Traumatic Brass Collective.

It was the first time we had met in person.

We also performed at the same conference, and when I came back, it June, a little bit later, a few weeks later, I fell and busted my lip.

My front teeth went through my top and bottom lip.

It was pretty well devastating.

I was devastated.

I got really depressed.

I couldn't play a trumpet for a few months and at the end of August, I am pretty sure was where my lips were healed.

And I finally felt like I can play trumpet again.

And I recorded that at the time.

But at the top, the da da da da da da da.

And I posted it on Instagram and at the time I think I labeled this tune Rainy Day sketch.

I was still trying to create every day, even though I couldn't play because of my busted lip.

But I was making sure I created something, made beats, and this was the first thing I record it just like randomly recorded it, came to mind and recorded it.

This year I wrote the other trumpet parts with it to have the entire trumpet solo.

Wow.

So this one's meaningful on many levels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Let's hear it.

Gratitude.

Thank you.

spoke to.

That was such an incredible composition.

I just love how you combine the beats and the trumpet that carries you through the emotions.

And I love that we're.

Able to see the trumpet up close with a performance like this and see how it works.

It's just fascinating.

Thank you.

Yeah, this has been such a treat.

Thanks so much for coming in and playing for us and talking a little bit about your journey and and your new solo career.

I look forward to hearing more.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having me.

My guest today has been trumpeter Theresa May.

Thanks so much for joining us for this edition of APPLAUSE Performances.

I'm Amanda Rabinowitz with Ideastream Public Media.

And be sure to follow Northeast Ohio's independent music scene with our podcast Shuffle.