Baltimore Native Brandon Woody Brings His Own Style of Trumpet Playing To The World

"So my craft is music, I am a creator, I'm a composer, a bandleader. Those are like the main things that I'm focusing on but play the trumpet. I've been playing for about 15 years and how I got into it. I used to play the drums, I used to bang on pots. First, I used to bang on pots and pans when I was growing up. My mom and dad were still together and then I went to elementary school, the first instrument that I wanted to play was the drums. I had focused on that instrument for a whole year and I felt like by the end of the school year, I still didn't get anywhere on the instrument. I didn't really progress. I didn't see any progress. So I had this talent competition...I had this music teacher in elementary school named Mr. Freeman, and he said, you know, go ahead, do the talent competition, like even helped me out, you know, practice on some music for the talent competition. So I did it. And then I just did awful, did an awful job, and then there was like this older kid that ended the whole talent competition that also played drums, and he won. So wow, that broke my heart. I was like, how's that? Oh my gosh, not even just that he won. I was definitely happy for him. But the fact that I did, I thought in my mind that I did a terrible job in front of hundreds of people in my elementary school at such a young age. I was like six, seven years old. I just stopped playing the drums and then took a summer off of music in general. Just like playing a lot outside and then that September, whatever year that was that I went back to elementary school probably like third grade. I was probably eight years old. I had the choice to pick between saxophone and trumpet. still wanted to, you know, be involved in music. I think the main thing that made me do that was because last year when I was playing drums, I was getting butterflies, like, you know, five minutes before band rehearsal, I would always get these butterflies in my stomach. I didn't even know what they were. But just like the kind of nervous, kind of passion like really hard passion feeling of like, something that you are just getting into, but you really love it and you still don't even know what it is. Right? So I still had those butterflies next year. So I was like, oh, yeah, definitely got to still make music and trumpet just had fewer keys on it. A trumpet only has three vowels. The saxophone has endless keys. So I just thought it would be easier to play trumpet, honestly. And it wasn't, definitely wasn't, I couldn't take the instrument home, I couldn't, I couldn't read the instrument and take it home until I made a sound on it in school. So I would come in early every day for like two whole weeks trying to make a sound on the horn and I finally made a sound on the horn after two weeks and he allowed me to take it home. I lived in apartments, you know, all my life for you know, a lot of my life, especially after I started playing the trumpet because I was just living with my mom and my brother. My mom and dad split up like a little bit before that. But, uh, you know, people in apartments are, you know, they're not trying to hear a young kid playing the trumpet when they got whatever they got, not knowing that, like, you know, these hours that I'm putting in these apartments are really changing and affect my life for the, for the better. It was crazy, because anytime that I would, this was definitely an example of my mom's love, advocacy, and hard work, and strength, as a single mom as a single black mom in Baltimore. You know, anytime somebody in an apartment building, you know, would knock on the door, whatever, she would just curse them out. You know? And I would keep practicing," said Brandon Woody.Brandon is a highly talented trumpet player who grew up in the heart of Baltimore. He went from learning trumpet in middle school to performing with trumpet playing legends and now starting his own fashion line with major national brands. Kristan learned about Brandon's life growing up in Baltimore, the milestones in his music career that got him to where he is today, and even the struggles he went through being a black musician.To learn more about Brandon Woody's craft, visit his website and Instagram.Photo Credit: Megan Elyse
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