Trumpet professor orchestrates trip to Romania

For the fortunate recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship, it can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For Sacramento State professor Gary Dilworth, it will happen twice. The professor of trumpet studies has been awarded a Senior Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to live and teach in Romania for the 2006 spring academic semester.

Dilworth is no stranger the Fulbright program. As a student at Sacramento State, he was a finalist for a trumpet scholarship that would’ve taken him to Germany. Then as a professor in 1991, Dilworth was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Artist Award to Taiwan, where he performed and led the brass section of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra. Dilworth has since been invited back to perform with the orchestra and before he departs for Romania, he returned to present a solo recital as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Tankang University in this November.

Dilworth will lecture in music education, brass pedagogy and performance practice at the National Conservatory of Music in Romania’s capital city, Bucharest. He chose Bucharest from a wide selection of worldwide destinations because of the opportunity to promote the brass instrument’s popularity in the country. According to Dilworth, the trumpet is not a popular or celebrated instrument in Romania, unlike the rich history that string and woodwind instruments have.

The Fulbright Scholarship Program sponsors the travel, education, instruction and research of professionals and students alike. Dilworth has worked for more than a year on the application process and the detailed grant proposals. He and his wife are set to depart in January and will return in late June.

“I’m sure I’ll help the students in Romania deal with some of the same issues as I do with students here,” he jokes.

Over his career, Dilworth has had the opportunity to travel extensively and perform with numerous symphonies and orchestras around the world. Here in the United States, he has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Sacramento Chamber Music Society and the International Trumpet Guild’s Festival of Trumpets. Dilworth also presents master classes around the world in such places as Taiwan, Australia and Singapore.

— Josh Huggett