“Unfortunately, it’s become normal for non-Jewish intros to be used at frum weddings, but some of them make me cringe”
HOW I FOUND MY INSTRUMENT
I was in yeshivah ketanah in Kiryas Joel with Mendy Hershkowitz, who was trying to put some kind of band together among the bochurim. The Feldman brothers, who played the music on Lipa’s first album, were his uncles and his inspiration. I had only seen a multi-piece band a few times in my life, and I had never seen a trombone. Most weddings had a one-man-band, and the few times that there was a five-piece band, there was never a trombone, because it usually only joins as the sixth or seventh instrument. A friend and I wanted to join the band, but they already had a drummer, guitarist, sax player, and Mendy on the keys. Mendy said we should decide between ourselves on the trumpet and trombone, and my friend opted for the trumpet, thinking the trombone was too big and too hard to learn, so I took the trombone. I saw one for the first time in my life when it arrived.
HOW I LEARNED TO PLAY
Once I had the trombone, I tried to figure out how to get tunes out, but I couldn’t, so I looked for a teacher. Yoeli Sandel a”h, who was in the yeshivah gedolah at the time and had a group called “The Berdichever Band,” had a teacher come to his house to teach him trumpet, and he arranged for me to have trombone lessons with the same guy, Jordan Hirsch. Six months later, I had learned enough musical notation to play at a sheva brachos. At that point I could only play songs I had learned in advance, but I’d also already figured out how and when to use the trombone to play riffs to keep the music moving.
MY FIRST PERFORMANCE
We played a bar mitzvah for a boy in Monsey with special needs. I played the first song I had learned, “Siman Tov Umazel Tov Umazel Tov Ve siman Tov.”
MY MUSICAL MENTOR
Yoeli Sandel, who was tragically niftar from Covid-19, gave me so many good tips. He started me off with a crash course not just on playing music, but on how a 14-year-old can become a musician. He gave me the heads-up that, for example, if I’d start to speak about music constantly, I would lose my old friends, and become exclusively part of the band chevreh. That’s actually what happened, but because of Yoeli, I was conscious of what was happening. There was one good friend I didn’t want to lose, and I made sure not to speak to him about music.
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