Nathaniel Mayfield is living proof that an education doesn’t make you smart. Mayfield is a professional classical musician who makes his living traveling the world and playing the baroque trumpet (also called the natural trumpet or clarino trumpet), a rare musical instrument twice as long as a modern trumpet and featuring no valves that takes special training to play. (Mayfield’s been playing his professionally for 6 years and was trained at prestigious music school Juilliard.) Mayfield was in Houston, Texas, to perform Handel’s Messiah with the Mercury Baroque Ensemble at Wortham Center. After the show, he went out to get some lunch with a friend. While Nathaniel Mayfield was eating, someone stole his $6000 baroque trumpet from the back of his car.
“We were joking just the day before when we were taking our instruments into a bar. Who would want them? There are no jobs and they’re really hard to play,” said Mayfield of his $6000 instrument, which is incredibly rare and will be impossible to pawn. “After the theft I was in shock,” he said. “Since then, it’s gotten worse. The trumpet was an extension of my soul.”
Mayfield is using a loaner baroque trumpet until his instrument is recovered or returned. The instrument is a Swiss-made replica of a baroque trumpet from 1749 that is currently hanging in a German museum. The instrument was not insured.
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