Year of the Trumpeter (El Año del Trompetista) is a piece for solo trumpet and band. Duration is 5 minutes, Grade for band and soloist is Grade 3. This is the piano reduction. It was composed in 2010 as an homage to four friends of mine who played trumpet and passed away in 2009.

Fred Mills played trumpet with the Canadian Brass for 24 years. I met him when I performed with Harvey Phillips and his Tuba Consort when we joined the Canadian Brass in a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall. I arranged a piccolo descant trumpet part for Fred that he played with the tuba group. We also worked together in Cordoba Argentina in 2006.

Linares Rodriguez was a member of the La Armonica Band of Buñol. After he retired from playing, hebecame the manager for the society?s buildings. When I first lived in Buñol in 1996 we became goodfriends and sometimes took walking excursions together.

Bill Maloof was my first boss as he was Chair of Composition during my first ten years as a facultymember at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Nedo Pandolfi was considered a great musical force in Rhode Island. His last concert with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra in 1983 was my first performance with the orchestra. At that time heplayed French Horn but his original instrument was trumpet.

Year of the Trumpeter was premiered March 8, 2014 by Antonio Cambres Rodriguez and the CIM La Armonica, David Fiuza, Conductor in Buñol (Valencia), Spain. The version for trumpet and piano was premiered in Magallon, Spain, July 2017 by Antonio Cambres with the composer playing piano. The band version was recorded by Cambres and the CIM La Armonica, David Fiuza, Conductor. It is on the CD Music for Wind Orchestraon La Armonica Records.

Gregory Fritze is a prize-winning composer and Fulbright Scholar, as well as an active performer and conductor. He recently retired from Berklee College of Music where he was Professor and Chair of Composition and tuba instructor, serving on the faculty from 1979 to 2016. He has written over ninety compositions for orchestra, band, chamber ensembles and soloists. He has won over sixty composition awards both nationally and internationally, including First Prize in the 1st WASBE (World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles) International Composition Contest 2017, First Prize Winner of the Reneé Fisher Composition Prize, First Prize Winner in the Concurso Bienal de Composición de Musica para Banda, Ciudad de Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain), Menzione d?Onore (highest award given) of the Mario Bernardo Angelo-Comneno International Music Competition by the Accademia Angelica Costantiniana Arti E Scienze (Italy), First Prize in the 1991 TUBA International Etude Composition Competition and several others. His compositions include works published by several publishers in the United States, South America and Europe that have been performed extensively throughout the world.

Gregory Fritze is also a very active tubist. He was Principal Tubist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic for thirty-three years as well as performing with many other ensembles in New England and Florida.

He has been a frequent traveler to Spain since 1993 and has promoted compositions by Spanish composers around the world. He is the only composer who has been commissioned six times by Spanishbands for Certamen competitions, with each band winning first prize.

He has thirty-four compositions commercially recorded on Albany Records, MSR Classics, Crystal Records, Mark Records and others. He has been a guest lecturer, conductor and performer at many colleges, universities and music festivals in the United States, Canada, Japan, South America and Europe. He was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1954 and has Composition degrees from the Boston Conservatory and Indiana University. He now resides in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida.

Zatten was commissioned in 2005 by Trumpeter Paul Neebe during the composer's vacation to do ancestral research in the town of Zatten, currently part of Poland.

Roger Petrich writes the following about his Zatten Concerto for Trumpet:

"The 'DNA' of this compostion tracks back to my great-grandfather and the tiny Plattdeutsch village where he was born. Zatten, [then] located in the eastern part of Berlin/Brandenburg is in an area of forest and small farms dating back to the 1600's. My grandfather R. T. Petrich, whose initials I bear, was six years old when he, along with his parents, sister, and older brother left Prussia to start a new life in the USA.

My own childhood memories include many visits to the family homestead in Dakota Territory, where I used to play in the barn which hosted many summer dances. The Dakota sky was vast by day, and nights could become magical with the addition of the Northern Lights. Though not a professional musician, my father kept up his trumpet playing all his life. In a special way it was his "voice" - a sound that deeply imprinted all my growing up years. All of this is mixed together in my Zatten Concerto"

The Zatten Concerto is in three movements, the two outer movements faster and the middle is a Largo. This work is written for Trumpet in C and is appropriate for advanced performers.

The title Zatten (the name of the small village in Germany where his family was located before immigrating to the USA) is spelled out in Morse Code in the very opening eight bars of the work. The Concerto is originally written for Trumpet and String Orchestra, this version using a reduction for Piano.