Santa Rosa High trumpet player David Green wins trip to play Carnegie Hall

So far, the trumpet has taken Santa Rosa High School sophomore David Green on quite a ride. It started in 2015 with a tour of Asia with the Santa Rosa Symphony Youth Orchestra and its conductor, Richard Loheyde. “I kept going from there,” Green said.

His mother, Cherie Green, described it another way: “He was hooked.”

The musical adventure continued last summer when he was chosen to participate in a three-week, intensive training program in New York for the inaugural National Youth Orchestra 2 (NYO2). As one of four trumpet players and one of the three youngest musicians there, he took workshops and performed with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra while visiting the Met Opera and the Juilliard School in between subway rides and bites of giant New York pizza slices.

“We ate lunch with the Philadelphia orchestra musicians and constantly asked questions,” Green said. “I learned an insane amount … at the end, we spent three days in Philadelphia and performed at Verizon Hall (home of the Philadelphia Orchestra).”

This summer, Green will head back east from June 30 to July 23 for another three-week stint with the 78-member NYO2, where he will once again bond with fellow musicians and participate in private lessons and chamber music, rehearsals and performances under the guidance of members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“This year, we’re going to Philly first and will perform in Verizon,” he said. “Then we’re going back to New York to play in Carnegie.”

Green and his colleagues in the NYO2 will not only get to make their debut at Carnegie Hall, performing side-by-side with the Philadelphia Orchestra, but will accompany special guest vocalist and bassist Esperanza Spalding, a young, fast-rising star of the jazz world. They will also have an opportunity to interact with some of the local, young musicians.

The NYO2 program, aimed at musicians ages 14 to 17, is an extension of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA, a three-week training residency that provides similar training to young adults ages 16 to 19, who also get to go on a tour of the music capitals of the world. Both Carnegie Hall programs are free and aimed at expanding the pool of young musicians across the country equipped to succeed at the highest level.

Green fits that description to a T. His goal is to study trumpet performance at a university or conservatory, then win a seat as a principal trumpet in a major orchestra. Green started taking trumpet lessons in third grade and has never looked back. He now practices three hours a day in addition to daily rehearsals for the SRHS band, bi-weekly practice sessions for the SRJC Jazz Band and weekly rehearsals of the Santa Rosa Symphony Youth Orchestra.

“He’s uncommonly focused on a single goal,” said Mark Wardlaw, head of instrumental music at SRHS, who has taught Green since middle school. “He’s unwaveringly committed to the discipline that pursuit requires … his private trumpet teacher, the highly respected Daniel Gianola-Norris, once told me that David ‘makes me realize what it is to be truly talented.’”

Trumpets have been played throughout history for religious and cultural rites and as well as for all kinds of military communication. Eventually, the brilliant color of the instrument made its way into concert and jazz halls, where its piercing power in the high register has been artfully mastered by trumpeters ranging from Wynton Marsalis and Alison Balsom to Dizzy Gillespie and Arturo Sandoval.

“Your lips have to buzz really, really fast to hit a high note,” Green explained. “It takes perfect position and control.”

That’s actually been a challenge for Green, who a few years ago, was told by one of his teachers that he had to change his embouchure - the way he applies his mouth to the mouthpiece of the instrument.

“You want the white flesh to be supporting the rim of the mouthpiece, and the lip should be inside,” he said. “It’s been really hard. I took a few days off, and it was back to long tones and low notes, and I’m still working on my range.”

Although born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Green and his family moved to Santa Rosa when he was just 1 years old. His father, Don Green, is chief of occupational medicine at Kaiser, and his mother, Cherie Green, is a physician and full-time faculty for the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency program. He has a 12-year-old sister, Sophie, who plays the oboe.

While attending Matanzas Elementary School, Green started taking private trumpet lessons and participated in the school’s well-regarded band program under music teachers Andy Darrow and Isaac Vanderveer.

“No drums, that was my only restraint,” said his mother, Cherie.

In the fifth grade, he joined the Santa Rosa Symphony’s Preparatory Orchestra and started studying with that ensemble’s brass coach, Daniel Gianola-Norris, who is also a member of the Sonoma State University Faculty Brass Quintet.

After working his way up to the Santa Rosa Symphony’s Repertory Orchestra, where he played principal trumpet, he attended the Cazadero Music Camp in the summers of 2013-2015 and made it into the All-State Junior High School Jazz Band in 7th and 8th grades, where he won a $500 scholarship.

After getting into the SRS Youth Orchestra, he started taking online lessons with David Bigler of the Philadelphia Orchestra in order to prepare for the concert tour of China.

At the NYO2, he will be working with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, a native of Costa Rica who serves as music director of the Nashville Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.

“He was really funny and had a lot of good analogies,” Green said. This summer, in addition to NYO2, he plans to go to the Interlochen Trumpet Institute and work with Santa Rosa Symphony Principal Trumpet Doug Morton and David Burkhart of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on upcoming auditions, including one for the San Francisco Youth Orchestra.

Next year, he will be old enough to try out for the National Youth Orchestra of the USA, which will be touring to Asia with San Francisco Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

One of the secrets to his success is time management and efficiency.

“I plan out my day and set goals, and I try to get three hours a day of practice,” he said. “Last summer at NYO2, trumpet player David Bilger gave an inspiring master class about being a musician. He said, ‘The better you get, the better the job gets.’”

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.