Tip From The Top

By James Morrison

In 1988, jazz critic Leonard Feather described James Morrison as: "A Wizard from Oz ... and ... the next superstar". Some seven years later he is being hailed as just that. Born into a musical family (mother plays saxophone, father clarinet, brother the drums), he started on cornet at the age of seven. Within a year he was also playing trombone, tuba and euphonium, in fact anything he could get his hands on.

At 13, James was playing six hours a night in a Sydney jazz club, and in 1979, at the age of 17, he made his American debut at the Monterey Jazz Festival. The following year he graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music with a jazz studies diploma. His first appearance in Britain was at the Royal Command Performance in 1985. Since then, his fame has spread, and he has toured and recorded with the Ray Brown Trio, and in 1994 toured Europe with his own band, Hot Hom Happening, a multi-national line-up that included our BTS past president, Mark Nightingale.

Very few musicians have been equally successful playing brass and reeds, but James Morrison switches from trumpet to flugel to trombone to euphonium to saxophone without giving it a second thought. Ask him about the problems of changing his embouchure, and he'll tell you: "I never even think about it. All I think about is the sound I am trying to create, and playing the trumpet as opposed to the saxophone was just a matter of learning to use your fingers this way instead of that."

Never forget that your instrument runs on air. People talk about tonguing techniques, embouchures, mouthpieces, and all the things to do with their face and where the trombone touches their body. I know that's very important, but sometimes to the detriment of remembering that, with the right air supply and control, all the other problems are sorted out. lf I'm having difficulty with something, I support it with more air and it all seems to go away. People ask me about playing very quickly: am I triple tonguing or doodle tonguing, or whatever? I'm single tonguing everything. I only ever single tongue. I've found that, with the right air control, and just the right amount of air behind my tongue, I can single tongue as fast as I like, and then I've got much better control over what's going on. So the bottom line for me is always - air. Any problem that arises, or anything I want to do - maybe I'm really going to push it, perhaps play high on a large bore trombone, or anything like that - air is the answer: the whole thing runs on air.

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