Episode #29: Jarrett McCourt
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Dominic Brancazio Podcast where we talk about all things classical music. Today we’re joined by Jarrett McCourt. Jarrett holds the Principal Tuba chair of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and is on faculty at the University of Memphis. Prior to this, Jarrett was the Principal Tubist with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the New World Symphony. In addition to his orchestral career, Jarrett is also an internationally acclaimed soloist, a dedicated teacher, and an advocate for wellness and mindfulness for musicians.
In today’s episode, we continue conversations about practicing our instruments covering how Jarrett approaches playing the tuba and we also talk deeply about a musician’s wellness and handling the stress that can come with having a career in classical music. We specifically go over how Jarrett approaches his fundamentals, incorporating the needs of the job into practice sessions, ways of addressing your weaknesses on your instrument, advice on handling general anxiety, advice if you’re not having a good playing day, building productive habits, staying present in practice sessions, and also being deliberate with setting boundaries with your professional and personal lives.
If you would like to learn more about Jarrett or his work, please check out the description below for more information. This was an absolute treat getting the chance to talk to Jarrett in this episode. I think that a lot of the topics we go into about dealing with stress can be relatable to any working professional and I hope that we as musicians can further the conversation on healthy ways to deal with these challenges of the job. Also any chance to talk about the tuba is so much fun! Jarrett has a lot of wonderful ideas about practicing that can be applied to any instrument. Once again, I appreciate you all for checking out these talks and I hope you get something useful out of this episode. Thank you all so much and now please enjoy the show.
To learn more about Jarrett:
-https://www.instagram.com/jarrettmccourt/?hl=en
-https://www.facebook.com/jarrett.mccourt
-https://www.youtube.com/user/jmccourt55
Link to Crisis Text Line: