Trumpeting a Lost Art
In an age of mass-produced music, one dogged young hornsmith insists on carefully crafting each of his brass instruments by hand.
Most people don’t know who Josh Landress is. Most people will never know who Josh Landress is. If he is lucky, people will eventually know of him, long after he has stopped doing what he is doing. Josh Landress makes trumpets. It takes him approximately seventy hours over the course of two or three months to finish building one, and even then he can’t be sure his clients will be happy—an economic reality that could dissuade even the most committed craftsman.
“You will understand that nobody will ever succeed making an instrument which will meet everyone’s approval, no matter how good it is,” wrote Vincent Bach, founder of Bach trumpets, in a letter dated 1952, “and even those people who make the worst type of instrument will always get a testimonial from someone certifying that it is the finest horn they ever played.”
Popular brands, including Bach, are churned out in factories by the thousands. In his ten years bending, tweaking and molding brass, Landress has made…
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