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Not tooting your own horn? Donate it

Two local music lovers are working to get instruments into the hands of New Orleans musicians who are unemployed without them.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published October 4, 2005

	[Times photo: Keri Wiginton]
	Bill Newell, 82, who has been playing the trumpet since he was 11, has collected more than 40 instruments to give to New Orleans musicians who lost theirs in the storm.

SPRING HILL - Mike Tranchida knows what it's like to be without a gig and without a beloved trumpet in his hands.

Years ago, he was jobless when he got a call to work as a sound man for Columbia Records in New York City. He bought a bus ticket from Miami and rhapsodized his way to the Big Apple. When he got there, the job had evaporated.

Without money, Tranchida slept at construction sites. He learned of a band in Chicago that needed a trumpeter. But how to get there? With emotions bottomed, the professional brass player parted with his beloved trumpet at a pawnshop, then bused to the Windy City.

The band advanced him the money to retrieve his treasured instrument.

So, Tranchida, now 62, can empathize with New Orleans musicians who have lost not only jobs, but also the tools of their profession.

When Tranchida's friend trumpeter Bill Newell of Spring Hill said he was launching a drive to collect instruments and put them in the hands of New Orleans's signature performers, Tranchida signed on.

"We feel for these guys," Newell said. "They're swamped. They're out of work."

Newell, 82, has a long history of collecting and giving away musical instruments, mostly to yearning and needy students lacking the means to purchase one.

New Orleans musicians are now among the most needy, he said.

Seeing a photograph in the Sept. 10 edition of the Times , taken in the Houston Astrodome, showing a handprinted cardboard poster seeking musician evacuees, Newell telephoned the number on the placard and made his first contact.

Newell has since found additional contacts via the Internet, including the Jazz Foundation of America.

Although none of Newell's instruments, offered through his Musical Instrument Providers Inc., is yet on its way to Louisiana, Newell said the wheels are churning.

He owns about 40 instruments, mostly brass, that he's willing to donate. But he envisions the need for more.

Newell dips into his own pocket to buy used instruments, paying about $100 to $200 for most. He picked up a horn for $25 at a yard sale, but that was some 20 years ago, he said.

A new professional-grade trumpet can run to $2,800, Tranchida said.

"A decent used professional trumpet is a thousand bucks," he said.

Neither are likely affordable for a musician routed without his instrument by Hurricane Katrina.

A professional would be loath to leave without his most valued possession, just as Tranchida had bemoaned pawning his trumpet, but Newell explained:

"I'd tuck it in my belt and pull my belt tight. But maybe they didn't want to risk denting a good horn."

The threat of an instrument being damaged in an evacuation probably prompted owners to leave them at home, where they imagined they would be safer, he said.

But safe many turned out not to be. Thus, Newell's mission.

Anyone who has a "silent instrument," which Newell describes as one in a closet, can help. He and Tranchida will work as a clearinghouse to get the instruments to those in need.

On hold temporarily is Bill Newell's Musical Upstarts, a program of providing free instruments to needy schoolchildren. He doesn't know offhand how many he's given away over the years. "Somebody shows me any kind of desperation to play, I'll find them an instrument," he says.

Newell played trumpet professionally in his teens, calls himself now a "fair to middling" player, but he "brought down the house" not long ago at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa. And he garnered rousing applause playing with standout James Peterson during Peterson's swan song performance in Brooksville recently.

Instrumentalists from Springstead High School gather at Newell's home to learn improvisation.

Newell bows to Tranchida as a higher-level professional. Tranchida has played with the Fort Lauderdale Symphony Orchestra, made music for the road show of the Broadway musical Cats, backed the Bee Gees and Frank Sinatra in recordings, and has played locally with the Hernando Symphony Orchestra and Stage West Community Playhouse.

Yet Newell and Trenchida, who teaches master classes in brass at Nature Coast Technical High School, as well as private lessons in Hernando and Pasco counties, say they are rewarded by putting instruments and lesson books into the hands of students who have a drive to make music.

"Your heart goes out," Tranchida said, "when you see one of these kids (playing)."

Newell said he smiles when one of his horn recipients calls and plays notes for him over the telephone.

--Beth Gray may be reached at graybethn@earthlink.net

[Last modified October 4, 2005, 02:15:30]