We’ve just finished our week with The Rat Pack – Live At The Sands at the spectacular NJPAC in Newark, New Jersey. We had a great band this week and I’d like to give a big shout out to all of them, especially my section mates Bruce Staelens and Tim Wendt.

It’s been a busy week which has seen me replace both my Trumpet and Mouthpiece! At the beginning of the week I found a used Schilke B7 trumpet at Roberto’s Woodwind in New York which is just fantastic. Then, on Thursday, Tim Wendt took me on a excursion to meet Greg Black; mouthpiece maker extraordinaire. We found that one of Greg’s stock rim/cups was almost identical to my Marcinkiewicz E13 and I spent a while trying out different backbores to accompany it. I was amazed to watch Greg make me a custom backbore on the spot and I’ve been using the mouthpiece since then. I hope to have a chance to pay him another visit very soon to iron out a couple of things that are troubling me with it but I pretty sure that I will only be playing his mouthpieces from now on. They really are superb!!
I took a few photos of the trip and they’ll be available in the Gallery shortly. A big thankyou goes to Greg for taking time to see me and to Tim Wendt for chauffeuring me there and back. Thanks guys!