Musician From Middleborough Plays Bass Trombone in National Symphony Orchestra
GUILFORD
New Bedford Standard Times
Haley Shoemaker
Boston University Washington News Service
December 1, 2009
WASHINGTON—Matthew Guilford decided to make a career out of playing the bass trombone after breaking his arm on the football field while a student at Middleborough High School. The injury, he said, gave him more time to practice music.
“I then joined … the Greater Boston Youth Symphony,” Guilford said. “After I got a flavor of what that was like I was hooked.” He said performing gave him the same adrenaline rush as when his football team scored a touchdown.
For the past 18 years Guilford, who is 44, has been living and performing in Washington. His main job is at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he is the only bass trombone player in the National Symphony Orchestra.
He is also an associate artist-in-residence at the University of Maryland’s main campus in suburban College Park, Md., and a faculty member at The Catholic University of America. He also gives private lessons, arranges music and performs with many other musical groups around the city.
Guilford, who began playing the trombone when he was 9 because his mother loved the sound of trombones, said he had a wonderful trombone teacher in Middleborough named Jerry Shaw. “Jerry Shaw is the salt of the earth,” said Beverly Salvato, Guilford’s mother. “He could be playing in any symphony, yet he’s teaching students.”
Guilford said Shaw put a lot of effort into working with each student. “He spent a lot of time with me; he was a tough but kind teacher,” he said. “I owe a lot of my successes to him. He’s an extremely dedicated person.”
Guilford said good teachers have to be consistent in their behavior toward their students, just as parents have to be consistent in dealing with their children. If a teacher behaves inconsistently, the students will be confused about what is required of them.
Guilford said that Shaw was always consistent in his teaching and that as his student he always knew what was expected of him.
Shaw, for his part, remembers Guilford as “an amazing, fun-loving guy, with a great ability to focus. When you told him something he needed to fix, he would get it right the next week.”
His experience with Shaw inspired him to teach, Guilford said. “I get just as much, if not more, satisfaction working with students as I do performing,” he said. Shaw said that Guilford recently sat in on one of his lessons, and that they have discussed teaching techniques.
Guilford also plays all low brass instruments, including the trombone, euphonium, trumpet and contrabass trombone. “Sometimes I play them with the symphony, too,” he said.
In addition to practicing at least a couple hours a day, Guilford said he has a cardiovascular routine to keep his lungs healthy and to stay in shape. “I have been playing for 35 years,” he said. “It’s a very physical, it takes a lot of air, you have to work out.”
He also does solo appearances as often as he can. He performed with the Washington Trombone Ensemble. “I played a solo and they backed me up,” he said. “They are some of the best trombone players. A lot of them play in service bands, the Air Force and Navy; they’re all wonderful players.” He is having a piece written for him to perform with the ensemble in March.
He also has had two recitals at the University of Maryland and plans to do another in the spring. He said, “It’s good to get out from the back row of the orchestra and just be a soloist.”
Guilford’s family members have attended many of his performances, “I love to go and watch him. I can go and close my eyes and hear him playing Maybe it’s because I am his mother,” Salvato said.
Guilford recently performed songs featured in videogames, ranging from Pac-Man to more-current games. A video screen showed images of the games as he performed. “It brought a lot of young fresh faces into the concert hall. I thought it was pretty fun,” Guilford said. “My son wanted to come, but the concert was beyond his bedtime, so I brought him souvenirs.”
In his spare time, he also arranges music, “I take a piece that already written, it could be for anything, a rock band or the violin, and write it so it’s playable on the bass trombone,” he said. Guilford did a recital about eight years ago of songs that he had arranged. “As a trombone player we don’t get a lot of Bach or Beethoven. We have to beg, borrow and steal. That’s where transcriptions and arrangements come in. I’ve thought about arranging some rock tunes for a trombone ensemble. I don’t think hip-hop would work though,” he joked.
Guilford’s music of choice is rock from the 1970s and 1980s. “I don’t listen to a lot of classical music, honestly. When my kids get into the car they turn to certain radio stations, mostly hip-hop, pop and rock,” he said. “My kids are turning me on to other music, like Kings of Leon and Jay-Z.”
Guilford studied music at Boston University and then transferred to the New England Conservatory, where he stayed on and received his master’s degree. Later, he joined the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, played with many musicians all over the country and went on tour with a road company of “Les Miserables.” I think that’s what he’s talking about. You can’t have a Broadway performance anywhere except on Broadway.
Guilford frequently gets to travel with the National Symphony. Each year the orchestra goes to culturally underserved parts of the country and stays for about 10 days and performs.
“My first trip was to Alaska, and it was amazing – we got to see polar bears,” Guilford said. He also has traveled with the orchestra to Maine, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska and Louisiana. Next year it is going to West Virginia. “You get to go to places that you would not normally choose to go to, but we always end up having a great time,” he said.
His family—his wife, Rayne, and their two children, a 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter—has traveled with him on some of his trips. “They’ve also got a taste for travel,” he said of his children. “They’re at an age where they still think I am cool because I perform in front of a bunch of people. When they become teenagers their sense of coolness might change.”
The orchestra also travels internationally, and Guilford has been to Europe numerous times and to southeast Asia. In June, the orchestra was in China and Korea. “Travel is a great perk of the job,” Guilford said.
He said he wants to live in Europe before his kids get too old. “I need to find a way to make it happen,” he said. Italy is his first choice. “It’s the best place on earth – the culture, the food – they just have it down. I have to figure out how to live there.”
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