SELINSGROVE — While we’re used to hearing guitar players use technology to get a wide variety of sounds from their instruments, doing the same thing with a trombone is another story.
Kevin Henry, who teaches trombone at Susquehanna University and is director of music at Curtin Middle School in Williamsport, has done just that.
Using a wireless microphone, amplifier and guitar effects equipment, he can shape and coax incredible sounds from his horn. And it doesn’t stop with his horn. Henry has assembled a blues and funk band that features four trombones on the front line, backed up by guitar, bass and drums.
They’re called K.T. and the T-bones.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Henry said. “We can make some amazing music.”
The four trombones add a new twist to the usual rock band, that may have a couple of saxophones or a trombone. Of course, Henry gives credit to the other members of the band, who have performed with such top-flight units as Daddy-O and the Sax Maniacs and Jazzin’.
“They’re all great musicians,” he said. “Bringing them all together is a great time.”
“We’re really fortunate to have Rob Bynum, who arranges for Davy Jones and the Williamsport, Symphony, doing our arranging,” Henry said.
The electronics that he uses provide him with a lot of opportunities for interesting interpretations, he noted.
“With the distortion, wah-wah and delay, I can play some things I’d never have gotten to play, things ranging from Led Zeppelin to Jimmy Page. The range of the horn is extended and I can bend notes like a guitar.
“I can make the trombone sound like the voice of an angel, or get really gnarly,” he said with a laugh.
Though trained as a classical trombonist at the New England Conservatory of Music, Henry was influenced by Gary Valente, a Latin-leaning trombonist, and he has performed with such contemporary artists as Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin and Harry Connick Jr.
“I love rock and blues,” he said.
Even so, he said, the band plays a Bach cello suite to offer its audience a little sample of the classical side of things.
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