Tom Arthurs

Trumpeter, Composer, Educator and Writer

After almost three years of European trumpet-safari and a certain feeling in the wind, in autumn 2012 I finally had the very good fortune to stop by Hub’s workshop in Margraten. On that day, the feeling I didn’t-quite-yet-know-I-was-looking-for slowly emerged from a table of some 15 instruments – a trumpet with incredible sound but also with great timbral flexibility, fantastic tuning but with space to sculpt, a dynamic range that spoke airily-yet-clearly at pianissimo, but also didn’t bite at triple forte – a trumpet with both intimacy and projection, technically perfect but expressively malleable, and finally an instrument that ‘macht mit’ and responded to every nuance and change in breath I had been imagining up until then.