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Junior Recital

Over 30 years later than first intended, then delayed even more by a pandemic, please join me for a live stream of my Junior Recital from Westminster College’s Wallace Memorial Chapel in New Wilmington, PA on Sunday, August 9 at 4 pm. Due to the pandemic, I am only allowed a few people into the chapel for the event, so I will be live streaming the recital on Facebook. Click here to find the event page/livestream.

The program consists of works by Kent Kennan, G.F. Handel, Peter Meechan and an arrangement of a traditional Irish melody arranged by Phil Snedecor. Here is a link to the pdf file of the program: Tim Hering – Junior Recital Program

I will be joined by Mr. Jeff Wachter on piano (and organ), senior trumpet major Vincent Buell, and Associate Professor of Trumpet, Dr. Timothy Winfield.

I may still have a few seats available in the socially distanced, mask-wearing audience in Westminster College PA’s Wallace Memorial Chapel, so if you would like to attend in person, drop me a line and I will see what is available!

Hope to see you online or in-person!

Featured

A Study of the Involuntary Activation of the Valsalva Maneuver In Brass Players

Photo provided by the Drinko Center for Undergraduate Research at Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA.

I have been awarded a fellowship through the Drinko Center at Westminster College for undergraduate research and am studying The Causes and Effects of the Involuntary Activation of the Valsalva Maneuver in Brass Instrumentalists. In layman’s terms, the Valsalva maneuver is when the glottis closes to block the airway, which is a normal function of the glottis, but it can cause problems in brass players if it happens at the wrong time.

Symptoms vary from person to person but can include lightheadedness, clicking or a guttural sound in the throat, pressure buildup in the chest and/or esophagus, inability to play a note, and/or “musical stuttering” or a sudden burst of a repeated note. For some players, these issues can be cleared up with regular practice, but for some, the remedy is not very clear.

My ultimate goal is to find out what is happening in the vocal tract at the time these issues occur and to develop a pedagogical approach to helping the player overcome these issues.  The goal of this initial 6-week fellowship is to collect data from as many brass instrumentalists as I can about issues they and/or their students experience related to the involuntary activation of the Valsalva maneuver and to gather data during the playing of the instrument as to what actions trigger the issues.

The current research is focusing on two main areas to collect data. The first is an online survey and the second is a playing study which involves playing a series of exercises on their main brass instrument and answering questions about what they feel and experience during those exercises. They can participate in both (if they play a brass instrument) or just the survey (as a player and/or teacher) or just the playing study (again if they play a brass instrument.)

For the online survey, I’m in need of brass players and people who teach brass players (which can include non-brass instrumentalists, such as someone who is a band director) to take a survey about their experiences playing their brass instrument and/or their experiences teaching someone to play a brass instrument. The survey can take up to 30 minutes, depending on if they play and teach or if they just play or teach. For those who just play or teach, the time to take the survey will be shorter. Click here for the link to the survey.  It can be taken any time up to at least August 9. It may run later but I ask people to take it sooner rather than later so I can begin analyzing the data. If the link doesn’t open, please copy and paste the following into the browser:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Z548e6x9g0SZBRAQOmcvM0SdhnqTUFNOgAqA2JSr8ylUQVpLNFMwNDlOQ0NJVjZWSURYR1JUUDZTRC4u

For the playing study, I have a series of exercises that include long tones, single and multiple tonguing, chromatics, range, lip flexibilities and an etude. The exercises are not meant to be difficult. The point is not to test skill but to try to see what is happening in the vocal tract while the exercises are being played. If the instrumentalist is unable to play any of the exercises, we just move on to the next.

These playing tests would ideally be done in the Westminster College School of Music in New Wilmington since I have arrangements to do my research there, but arrangements can also be made to do it via SKYPE or other video conferencing software if travel to the college is not possible. I will be taking video during the playing test, but only so I can review them later and will not be used in any presentations of the data.

The playing study will take about an hour to an hour and a half but realize that much of the time is not actually playing but talking about what was played so it is not a solid hour or so of playing. Anyone wishing to participate can contact me at heritb22@wclive.westminster.edu and/or if they are taking the online survey, can provide contact information at the end of the survey. I am currently scheduling these between now and August 9, 2019.

Thank you,

Tim Hering

Research Invitation

Review The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives by David Mura

The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American NarrativesThe Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives by David Mura
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself – Racial Myths and Our American Narratives, by David Mura, is a collection of essays aimed at showing how white America is brought up to believe a set of ideals about itself that allows systemic racism to continue and proliferate, even among those whites who consider themselves as liberal thinkers.
Muir’s essays are often a bit dry, but that can be forgiven as much academic writing cannot hope to be riveting material. His essays cover contemporary news stories such as the police killings of Philando Castile, George Floyd, and Daunte Wright, to slavery, the founding fathers, and Abraham Lincoln. Muir also compares the differences in how blacks and whites tell stories.
In the section titled “Racial Absence and Racial Presence in Jonathan Franzen and ZZ Packer,” I felt Muir strays from a factual analysis of his subject and loses objectivity, albeit briefly. However, I felt that the subject of this particular essay, Franzen, wrote something that Muir did not find believable but was not precisely on the topic of whiteness in literature.
Regardless, I feel this is a must-read for anyone who wants to see positive change from the current divisive rhetoric in today’s political and social arena.

View all my reviews

When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes AirWhen Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“When Breath Becomes Air” is a beautifully written memoir about redefining life goals when even the most meticulously laid plans suddenly change. While the author writes this in response to a terminal diagnosis, we can apply the lessons he imparts in this book to situations where we are confronted with a life-altering event.

This book was simply breathtaking in its prose, never letting the medical jargon get in the way. The book made me laugh and cry, and while it is sad, it is also incredibly uplifting and hopeful.

View all my reviews

Anxious People

Anxious PeopleAnxious People by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fredrik Backman has a way of developing characters that pull you into a story and don’t let go. For those who have trouble with timelines that are not exactly linear, this might be a hard read, as Backman delivers information from various parts of the timeline out of order. Just as in real life, character development happens in this out-of-order sequence, so at first, I did not care for many of the characters. Still, as I got to know each of them, I began to understand just what this story is about, and I could not put this book down, reading it cover to cover in one day.

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Notions and Nightsongs Trumpet Recital

Join me for an afternoon of Notions and Nightsongs, in person at New Wilmington Presbyterian Church, 229 South Market Street, New Wilmington, PA 16142, at 3 pm, Saturday, June 11, 2022.

I will be joined by Nancy Zipay DeSalvo on piano for a program of pieces by Purcell, Hummel, Turrin, Peasley, and Everson. This is the same program we performed in April at my first Master’s Recital.

I hope to see you in person, but if you are unable to attend in person, I will be live streaming the event at https://fb.me/e/4RyKW3iS4.