Brass Chamber Music During Covid - Matt Barker

     Matthew Barker is currently the 4th/utility trumpet with the Baltimore Symphony, as position which he's held since the 2016-2017 season. Like many other musicians, he found himself with very little to do once his orchestra closed its doors at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. The following video is a trumpet chamber piece he wrote and recorded himself, while at home during the global lockdown. Pay attention to the art style and intentional recording style being used here. A trend that began to emerge in peoples content around this time was experimental/interesting camera work, to try to be unique from the pack and get eye on their work. A cursory understanding of how to work a camera soon became a common expectation around people who recorded themselves for online content. 



Comments

  1. Ryan BanksApril 16, 2025 at 10:05 AM

    Thanks for sharing this Jake.I wonder how old he is, He looks very young! Covid was a tricky time as a musician. I made a couple videos, none even close to this quality. One of them was Golden Slumbers by the Beatles. I like the video style, with the constant changing images and multiple locations, the different colors used as backgrounds. I am not this skilled with a camera, I think it is time I learn!

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  2. Brady GApril 29, 2025 at 12:17 PM

    Multitracks were pretty popular before 2020, and then when covid hit it seems like every musician under the sun learned how to make them. That’s not at all to diminish what Matthew Barker created here. I think this was a cool era where musicians were forced to try new ideas, and I hope we haven’t forgotten these lessons.

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  3. Anna KellyApril 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM

    I really appreciate how good people got at self recording during the pandemic. However, all of these recordings still do have a very specific style that label them as being definitely from the pandemic era. All of these multi track recordings prove to me that live performance/recording will never go out of style because there is such a tangible difference between everyone actually playing together, and things being spliced together post production. Not to say this isn't incredibly well done, just a different medium.

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