The Big Week is here! Are you wondering how to celebrate? Let’s spark your imagination…
If you play the trombone, celebrate International Trombone Week by getting out and playing it!
If you don’t play the trombone (yet), we have ideas for you, too:
- Create a spontaneous trombone performance in the middle of town. How about a Bourbon Street Parade?
- Play some lovely tunes for an appreciative audience at your local retirement home. Bones of Cincinnatus does this nearly every year!
- Offer to teach a friend how to play the Bb Blues on the trombone, and then walk together to play it for someone who needs to hear it
- Support local student trombone players by attending a school concert
- Visit your town library and read a book aloud during story hour; here’s a perfect suggestion.
- Share a video of you playing your favorite Bordogni etude
- Finally realize your wild dream of learning to play the trombone and get a friend to learn along with you
- Gather some people for supportive coaching and then head out to march around in a grocery store
- Propose a trombone segment for your favorite radio station. If they need a suggestion, start them off with Carl Fontana and Frank Rosolino
- Play a few hyms at church, or march around playing chorales in wee hours
- Stream your amazing trombone choir concert so the entire world can enjoy it
- Discover a long-lost trombone while cleaning out your attic and donate it
- Learn about proper Baroque/Rococo style trills on the alto trombone
- Paint a still-life of your sackbut (yes, we said that)
- Offer a video class for young trombone students like the very first video masterclass *ever* which happened to be during Trombone Week in 2003!
- Learn to play a chant on a serpent
- Improve your flexibility thanks to Nick Finzer’s pedal tone major scale
- Decorate your trombone with bright paint and neon lights for a great conversation-starter at the formal orchestra concert
- Make magic happen by supporting a street trombone player
- Create an outstanding Trombone Day like the one in Greensboro and the one in Calgary and the one in Des Moines and the one in Tallahassee and the one in Detroit and the one in …?
- Post action photos of your trombone mutes
- Attend a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and offer to have your trombone’s picture taken
- Throw a trombone listening party for your neighborhood
- Demonstrate how you build fabulous bass trombones
- Play long tones in the park on Monday, lip slurs in the forest on Tuesday, and new music in the city on Wednesday
- Interview a local trombonist–on cable TV, or write up what you learn for your town paper
- Perform with an activist band for a cause you believe in
- Perform Chopin’s Minute Waltz on a hoverboard
- Conductors: Ask your trombone section to stand and receive a round of wild applause just because
- Invite a master trombonist to work with your band
- Give your trombone a proper cleaning using Mike Corrigan’s instructions. Then take it for a ride around town (we’re just kidding; don’t do that)
- Commission and/or premiere a new work for trombone
- Print some trombone stickers and pass them around at that office meeting that needs perking up
- Thank someone for playing the trombone (or encouraging you to)
- Read up on the trombone’s history and tell everyone about it during yoga class
- Listen to the sounds of beautiful trombone choirs like the ones at University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University
- Play a magnificent arrangement of a familiar tune before a sporting event
- Get out your magnifying glass and examine a previous ITW map
- Compose or arrange a piece for others to play during ITW
- Learn about an interesting trombone player and give a talk about them
- Bake something delicious and decorate it with TromboneWeek’s logo to share with a friend
- Create and share an informational flyer about International Trombone Week
- Serenade some cows
- No matter where you go on your trombone Journey, don’t stop believin’
- What are we missing?
Enough reading. What will you do?