“I want to put trumpets in the hands of as many girls as possible” -Troy Sawyer
Girls Play Trumpets Too is a part of my musical journey while growing up in a special place called New Orleans, the birth place of Jazz, where I was thrusted into a gumbo pot of creativity and heritage. The musical lineage of my family gave birth to my interest to play the violin and the trumpet. The trumpet eventuall
y chose me because I felt that the trumpet represented Cool like Miles Davis, Fire like Freddie Hubbard, Spirituality like Lee Morgan, and Soul like Louis Armstrong. And so I was driven to practice to get better each and every day. I realized that I was growing as a trumpet player but I didn’t realize that my bias towards female trumpet players was growing also. I had never seen or heard a professional female trumpet player at the time. As a result, I thought that girls could not play the trumpet on a high professional level, which was supported by the history that was taught to me about the Germans, who were the creators of brass instruments and that they believed that brass instruments represented power and masculinity. However, it wasn’t until I met a “girl trumpet player” that could play really well at Loyola University’s Jazz Camp while we were both in high school.She was a nice person and she was one of the best sight readers. Thereafter, I remembered going to Dillard University to check out a female Jazz trumpeter from Canada while attending Xavier University at New Orleans majoring in performance. She played music from Miles Davis - a great jazz trumpeter. That experience destroyed all of those misconceptions and generalizations that I had towards female trumpet players. Currently, I am a professional trumpet player and music educator. I have
inspired a substantial amount of girls to play the trumpet throughout the years of educating the youth in New Orleans. As a result, I am on a mission -along with the girls that rock on trumpet- to change the narrative of female trumpet players by putting “trumpets in the hands of as many girls as possible!”
