Twenty-five years as Professor of Trumpet at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have made teaching as central to Eric Berlin’s work as performing. Owing so much inspiration to his own childhood teachers — most notably Jim Metzger and David Rentschler in his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania — he has treated the development of the next generation of players and teachers as a vital part of his career from the beginning. Trained by premier orchestral players, he also credits his years as one of Boston’s busiest private instructors for young musicians as integral to the way he teaches today.

Private Lessons — In Person and by Zoom

Professor Berlin teaches in person at his studio in western Massachusetts and is thoroughly set up for remote lessons over Zoom. Distance is no longer an obstacle: students anywhere can work with him regularly, come for a single consultation before an audition, or schedule a short series to address one specific problem.

Lessons are built around whatever the player actually needs, and typically cover:

• Sound production, air, and the fundamentals that hold up under pressure
• Efficiency and endurance — playing a long week without wearing out
• Orchestral excerpts and audition preparation
• Solo and recital repertoire, from the standard literature to brand-new works
• Transposition, piccolo trumpet, cornet, and the rest of the family
• Contemporary and extended techniques, and the practical business of preparing a premiere
• College and conservatory audition preparation
• Career advice for students and young professionals

Young players are especially welcome. For the first ten years of his career Professor Berlin made his living teaching privately — at its height sixty students a week, from fourth-grade beginners through high school — and he still regards that as the work that shaped him most. A young mind that has not yet saddled music with the weight of a career is a sponge, thirsty and open for whatever a teacher has to offer, and there is little more satisfying than being part of that discovery.

College and conservatory students looking for a different perspective alongside their own teacher are welcome, as are adult amateurs and returning players, and band and orchestra directors who want to sharpen their own playing or get help with a section. To ask about availability, write to majesty@majesticbrass.com or use the contact page.

How Lessons Work

Every lesson is recorded, and the recording goes to the student. Professor Berlin has done this since 2003, when it meant handing over a CD at the end of the hour — one former student still keeps the binder of them on his office shelf. On video it is more useful still: a student can go back and watch the moment a problem was solved, as many times as it takes, instead of trying to remember it a week later.

There is no single method. The approach is built around the player in front of him. Some students need to be talked through a problem, some need to see it, and some need to be got out of their own way before anything else can happen.

Thirty-five years of teaching have produced a wealth of ideas that are not in general circulation. The constant search for a solution that fits one particular player is the most creative and satisfying part of the work, and it is where those ideas come from — a problem no standard answer solves, and a fix built for the person in front of him.

Rates

Online lesson, 60 minutes by Zoom — $125. In-person lessons at the western Massachusetts studio are quoted on request, as are masterclasses and residencies. Students outside the United States are welcome; lessons are scheduled in your time zone.

Audition Preparation

Audition work here is not theory. Professor Berlin has been a finalist for Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, reached the final four for Principal Trumpet of the San Francisco Symphony and the final two for Principal Trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony, and has been a finalist at the Boston Symphony Orchestra on several occasions. In 2018 he served as a finals judge at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, one of the most prestigious solo competitions in the world for trumpet, and more than one hundred of his students are now working as performers and teachers.

Audition lessons cover list planning and pacing, excerpt-by-excerpt work, mock auditions behind a screen, recorded prescreen preparation, and the mental side of playing for a committee. For college and conservatory candidates, that also means repertoire choice, school selection, and the recording itself.

Student Success

Both of Professor Berlin’s Massachusetts high school students earned places in the All-State ensembles this season — one of them as principal trumpet of the All-State Orchestra, followed by a summer at Interlochen.

That is the recent end of a long record. His students have won the Graduate Division of the National Trumpet Competition, the largest competition for trumpeters in the world, and have placed second in the Undergraduate Division and third in the Jazz Division, with semi-finalists in every division year after year. His trumpet ensembles have reached the national quarter-finals and semi-finals repeatedly, placed fourth in the country, and performed at the Schagerl Festival in Melk, Austria. At the International Trumpet Guild — the only international organization for trumpeters, with more than five thousand members — his students have taken second place in the Solo Competition, reached the semi-finals of the Orchestral Excerpts Competition, and won scholarships every year, as many as nine in a single season. Others have been named to the National Collegiate Honor Band.

They go on to the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory, the Manhattan School of Music, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of North Texas, Indiana University, the University of Southern California and Boston University, among others. Among those already working: tenure-track professors, members of the premier military bands in Washington, orchestral players throughout the Northeast and abroad, and many who have built careers on their own terms. More than one hundred of his former students are performing and teaching today, and very nearly all of his music education graduates have been placed in school systems across the Northeast.

A Lineage of Teachers

Professor Berlin’s principal teachers were Charles Schlueter, former Principal Trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Thomas Rolfs, Principal Trumpet of the Boston Symphony; Vincent Penzarella, former Second Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic; Frank Kaderabek, former Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Robert Nagel, soloist and founder of the New York Brass Quintet; and Mario Guarneri, Principal Trumpet of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Trumpet Performance from the New England Conservatory and was a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and of the Music Academy of the West.

That lineage is not a list of names on a résumé. Each of those players solved the instrument’s problems differently, and a lesson here draws on all of them rather than on a single method.

Teaching from the Stage

Professor Berlin has been Principal Trumpet of the Albany Symphony Orchestra since 1998 and a member of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project since 1995, and he also holds positions with the Colorado Music Festival and the Berkshire Opera Festival. He has played with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony, and has served as Guest Principal of the Saint Louis Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic and as Acting Principal of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de la República Dominicana. He appears on more than 135 commercially released recordings, among them Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated albums, and has premiered dozens of new works, many of them written for him. What comes into a lesson has usually been tested in a rehearsal or a performance that same week.

Masterclasses and Residencies

Professor Berlin has given masterclasses and clinics at the Eastman School of Music, the Yale School of Music, McGill University, Ithaca College, the University of North Texas, Baylor University, Texas Tech University, Oklahoma City University, California State University Long Beach, Virginia Commonwealth University, Gardner-Webb University, Boston University, and the Longy School of Music. Abroad, he has taught at the Sibelius Academy and the Turku Conservatory in Finland, at the Pernambuco Brass Festival in Recife, Brazil, and at the Association of Brazilian Trumpeters Conference. He is a frequent presenter at state music education conferences, including the New Hampshire All-State Conference and the New York State Music Association Conference.

More

His published writing on practice and teaching — the Practice Space series, the Eric Berlin’s Workshop columns from The Brass Herald, and articles in the International Trumpet Guild Journal — is collected on the Articles page.