Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Morgan Hare. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Morgan, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I consider resilience a quality that pretty much necessitates facing challenges or hardships.
Without going into detail, I’ve been facing rather significant challenges even from a young age. When you have a difficult personal life, it can be really isolating. It’s hard to open up to people, and that makes it even harder to make friends or find support. When I look back, I can essentially mark the major periods of my life so far based on whatever the biggest challenge was at the time. To some, this may seem like a really negative way to view their personal history, but that’s not really how I see it. Each of those challenges helped me grow in some way.
I didn’t really start to make peace with the never-ending line of challenges until early in my undergraduate degree. Before, I kept thinking that if I solved my problems, that my life would finally become easy. I felt trapped and isolated in my hometown? I moved to a city. My partner turned out to be abusive? I left him. But new issues would always crop up. It was sometime during my first real threat of homelessness that I realized the challenges I faced were largely out of my control. And isn’t coming to terms with the fact that you can’t choose your problems a challenge in itself?
It’s really hard to concede that a problem-free life is an impossibility. Sure, there are areas of less resistance, but that isn’t exactly the way I want to live life. That’s probably obvious, because I chose to pursue a career as a classical trumpet player, which is extremely competitive, oversaturated, and often considered to be a “dying” industry. Facing an obstacle can be scary or frustrating in the moment, and it’s completely fine to experience and work through those emotions. But ultimately, it’s also an opportunity to learn and grow. Nearly everything good in my life has been (directly or indirectly) the result of overcoming something significant. I don’t really consider myself an optimist so much as a realist. I don’t face many of my obstacles thinking “this is going to be great!” It feels more like I’m throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. My resilience comes from the faith that if I just keep pushing forward and making some effort, I’ll make it through to the next big thing.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
First and foremost, I’m an orchestral trumpet player. That’s the focus of my performing work, and it’s the most consistent aspect of my performing life. At the moment, I’m just a freelancer and substituting in orchestras around my state, but the end goal is to be a contracted member (ideally principal trumpet) in a full-time orchestra. I love the work more than anything else I’ve done.
Outside of this, however, I like to maintain a rather diverse performance portfolio. Sometimes, it’s in a similar vein: big bands, chamber ensembles, jazz combos, rock/cover bands, and solo performances all make regular appearances on my schedule. But I also branch out into other forms of performance without trumpet as my schedule allows. I dabble in violin and viola, I’m a jazz singer, and whenever time permits, I like to act (especially in musical theatre). Being a freelancer, I try not to relegate certain aspects of my performance life to simply being “hobbies,” because they’re all interwoven and often overlap. This may seem like a lack of focus on a single discipline, but they all make my personality as a performer more unique.
As of late, I’ve taken a particular interest in horror films and horror film music. They’re often misunderstood as art because they can be uncomfortable to watch and are considered “sensationalist.” It started out as a mild interest—just watching films here and there—but I’ve begun to truly appreciate them as an art form that has been able to maintain some of its “purity” from market influence, in part due to its somewhat niche standing in the broad category of entertainment. I realized that I love the fusion of horror elements with narratives, dramatic performance, and new music. Recently, I decided to start fusing these elements with live trumpet performance. I re-edited and re-scored William Castle’s “House on Haunted Hill” (1959) for solo trumpet and track. It’s a 40-minute, two-part work that I’ve had the pleasure of performing twice. It’s certainly experimental, but I feel like I’m developing a new form of solo performance that will be more accessible to the general public and hopefully will provide more equitable opportunities for solo artists to perform live without the financial burden of live accompaniment. I’m looking forward to more projects in a similar vein, especially as some truly outstanding films are entering the public domain.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I consider my journey to be just beginning, and sometimes I think I’ll be saying that for the rest of my life. Every so often, it feels like the rules of the “game” change, and I have to reassess how I approach my life. I think that if I had to choose three skills that have made the most impact on my journey, they would be patience, flexibility, and courage.
When it comes to patience, I don’t mean just waiting for things to happen. It’s like an active patience. I’ve had to learn over time that just because I’m working hard to move forward or improve doesn’t mean it’s going to happen immediately. It’s really easy to understand the relationship between hard work and results when they happen in the short term, but in the long term, it’s really difficult to accept. Sometimes, you’re on the right path—perhaps even the best path for you—and it’s going to take a long time.
If you’re looking to improve your patience with your journey, there’s three main pieces of advice that I can offer: first, stop comparing yourself to the people around you. Your journey is YOUR journey, and you cannot measure yourself by a metric that belongs to somebody else. As somebody relatively new to the field, I struggle watching colleagues my age or younger who are winning positions or certain accolades before me. However, the playing field isn’t even: I have to accept that I’ll get where I need to go when I get there. The second piece of advice is to remember the past. Look back at where you were when you started, and take note of the progress you made and the things you learned. How have you improved? What strategies are working? But the final piece of advice would be to focus on your process as much as possible. I’m a very goal-oriented person, but it’s not sustainable to simply measure yourself by your accolades. Your goal should be like a compass pointing you in a certain direction, but your focus should remain on the work you do in the moment to get there.
Sometimes your goal will need to change, or you’ll face an obstacle that you really can’t move past. This is why I consider flexibility to be so important. Every so often, I set a goal for myself in the past that no longer works for me in the present. Before settling on trumpet performance, I used want to be a film composer. I learned over time that it wasn’t a realistic goal for myself, and I changed direction. I would like to think that if I realized my current career or life goals were no longer possible or sustainable, I would have the ability to redirect. But flexibility may also be necessary along the path to an unchanged goal. This is something especially relevant to me now, as I’m just graduating from a degree that took twice as long as it should have. I’m at a point where—with my age, skill, and experience—it may no longer be helpful or necessary for me to get a second degree. Sometimes you have to change direction to get to your goal.
With flexibility, there’s little more advice I can offer than to pay attention to how well a certain path is working for you. Just because there is a “common road”—like getting two or three degrees before entering the workforce—doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the road you should travel. If something isn’t working for you, be honest with yourself. There’s no shame in doing something differently if it fits your journey better. I have a mental list of people who looked at the journey I’m taking and (often without knowing me very well!) told me that I’d never attain my goals. I’m constantly proving these people wrong. You should listen to advice, but keep in mind that nobody knows you better than you do.
Ultimately, the most important skill of the three is courage. Courage is necessary for growth. You need it in order to be patient with your process, because there’s never a guarantee that what you’re doing will work. You need it in order to be honest with yourself as to whether your path or goal is right, and you often need it to change course. I needed courage to face nearly every obstacle in my path, and I need it in abundance nearly every time I step into a new part of my journey. Today, I consider it the strongest tool in my arsenal.
Courage is the hardest skill to learn because it ultimately requires you to face a fear. My advice would be to begin by acknowledging when you’ve needed courage in the past. Sometimes, the hope or promise of some future reward can overshadow the fear you may feel over an action you made in the past: attending an interview, playing an audition, sharing your work, etc. These are all things that require varying amounts of courage. Be able to recognize when you’ve had to use the skill before, celebrate the moment, and let that knowledge empower you to do it again in the future. You should also stop attaching shame to fear. As someone with chronic anxiety, fear permeates even the smallest aspects of my life. Fear is normal, and part of life and growth. When you can accept that fact, then courage is far easier because ultimately, shame is completely abstract. Attaching it to an existing obstacle will only make it harder to achieve your goals.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I’m always looking, of course, to gain more work on trumpet both in orchestras and as a soloist. I’ve also started doing digital performance collaborations, but my favorite area of work is in live performance. This past year I substituted with a few orchestras and played a solo recital for an arts festival, but I would love to see that work pick up now that I’m no longer in school.
Outside of typical performance collaborations, I’m actually looking to expand more into the synthesis of live performance and film. I would love to collaborate with people who are looking to create some experimental multimedia works with underlying themes around social justice: filmmakers, actors, composers, and even other musicians. I believe that theatrical instrumental performances are a somewhat unexplored medium with so much to offer, and though existing film is a great point from which to jump off, I would love to create similar projects to my “House on Haunted Hill” work wherein the musical aspect is integral from the point of conception.
If you’re interested in hiring me or in developing new projects, you can reach out to me via Instagram (@morganharetrumpet) or email me at morganharetrumpet@gmail.com.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morganharetrumpet?igsh=MjBrbGtvZHQyaWdx&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morganharetrumpet
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClH8_VATq52TL5vwW2sWJFQ
- Other: Email: morganharetrumpet@gmail.com
Image Credits
Erik Auberg (uncredited) (uncredited) (uncredited) Bridget Parlmer
