The Charlier Challenge

[joshuamaccluermusic]

The "36 Etudes Transcedentes" is a classic book of 36 difficult etudes by the Belgian trumpet teacher Theo Charlier. Most trumpet students work out of this book in music school, but usually they don't get past the first dozen of them. The etudes get quite difficult as they go on and almost everyone gives up eventually and goes back to practicing Pictures at an Exhibition and the Haydn Trumpet Concerto instead.

The format of the Charlier Challenge was as follows: every week we learned the next etude in the book and recorded our best single take effort with no editing allowed. We submitted every Wednesday. The clips were put up anonymously online and 36 first class guest judges each judged a week and picked their favorite, submitting comments if they so desired. Each week one point was awarded and the winner would be the one with the most points at the end of the 36 weeks.

The details about the challenge can be found at: http://joshuamaccluer.com/the-charlier-challenge/

We highly recommend this kind of project for players at all levels. Already a group of cellists have taken the idea and worked through the Popper book with the same format, there is a horn Challenge going on as this article is published. Thanks to everyone involved and best of luck on your Challenges in life, whatever they are.