Trumpeter and composer Sean Hennessy’s life is a game of musical chairs.
At any given moment, he’s writing and performing original music for the Hennessy 6, a jazz sextet made up of world-class musicians from military bands such as the Air Force Academy Falconaire. Next thing you know, he’s performing and composing with the elite brass chamber ensemble Denver Brass.
“People know me as a jazz trumpet player. I don’t get many, if any, opportunities to do solo classical stuff, and I love it,” Hennessy said. “The problem is that people look at you as a trumpet player, as part of the Denver Brass and these groups, and assume that what you do is one thing. Musically, I love doing a lot of things.”
One of my other jobs is composing soundtracks for Hollywood films and documentaries, including horror film docs. He’s reached surprising territory since composing the music for 2010’s “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy,” about the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series.
Burning Man, Coachella, Olympic installation artist holds first gallery show in Colorado Springs
“It’s not my favorite genre. Horror movies scare me,” Hennessy said. “They called me and said, “A composer has fallen, we heard about you, we have two weeks and it’s a five-hour documentary. Can you do it?” I was grading a different function. You can do things that are impossible when you’re young.”
His original music currently accompanies about 10 horror films, the latest of which, “Dock of Chucky,” based on the “Child’s Play” series, was released this month on AMC’s Shudder, the all-horror streaming platform. It was released in. Another horror documentary, 2021’s Pennywise: The Story of It, was the No. 1 documentary on iTunes domestically for several weeks.
“He’s very thoughtful and brings a lot of interesting ideas to the table,” said Richard Van Kleek, who hired Hennessy to score three documentaries, including “Fleeting Reality,” which premiered this month on PBS. the director said. It follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Louisville Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky.
“It was very emotional,” Van Kleek said. “There were different chapters, but when I opened the file and saw what he had created, it was like Christmas.”
The story behind the musical
On a Friday afternoon in a quiet neighborhood on the southwest side of Colorado Springs, you won’t hear Chucky’s maniacal laughter or whispered threats amid the eerie tunes. Instead, outside Hennessy’s house on a quiet cul-de-sac, only the faint sound of trumpets running scales wafts on the wind.
Just inside the front door stands 12-year-old Miles, a Chihuahua/mini poodle mix from Boston. It is named, of course, after the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. And if you had stopped by last year, Satchmo, a Chihuahua Pomeranian named after jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s nickname, would have given you fond memories, too. But since then, he has ascended to the great recording studios in the sky.
Hennessy’s crowded studio reflects that of a man who dedicated his life to music. There’s an old piano on one wall, and a keyboard, speakers, and a large computer monitor on another, where he works his magic on film scores.
Across the room is a table loaded with a collection of trumpets, including an adorable piccolo trumpet. A Pennywise documentary film poster is on the wall along with other memorabilia.
Long-time Colorado Springs theater company announces resignation of artistic director
There’s also a framed photo of him and his mentor, the famous jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis. He was Hennessy’s mentor for about 10 years, starting in his early teens.
“Once I started playing the trumpet, I started getting a lot of people wanting to help,” Hennessy said. “You become a genius musician at a young age. People contacted me and told Wynton he wanted to play for me. It’s a relationship that lasts my whole life.”
The remaining space is filled with unidentified musical instruments, including an unopened box containing a Chinese stringed instrument, a gift from his brother.
“Every birthday, he sends me the weirdest instrument he can find,” Hennessy said, showing off what looked like an old silver horn. “At some point I realized what this was. I think it was a fire extinguisher. We used to ride around in fire trucks and play this before we honked.”
The gift of a horn has meaning. Ten years after arriving on Earth, Hennessy chose the trumpet as his instrument and sealed his destiny. Or you could say the trumpets chose him.
He was 3 years old when his family moved from Tucson, Arizona to Colorado Springs. By the age of 10, he was an avid Armstrong fan, thanks to his fondness for the oldies radio station in town.
“When ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ came on, I loved the trumpet and the way he played it,” Hennessy said.
Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 didn’t allow students to play in band until they were 10 years old, or third grade for him. The children passed the instruments around in a circle and had them try each instrument, and the music teacher suggested which instrument would be suitable for them based on their ability to produce sounds.
“I was hoping that when the trumpet came, I could create something out of it and be able to play it,” Hennessy said. “My family wanted me to play the saxophone, so I started playing the trumpet.”
Fortunately, he recalled the sound of brass instruments. Because music played a big role in helping him cope with difficulties. His mother became ill when he was young and was bedridden until Hennessy was halfway through college.
“My brother and I each had different ways of coping,” he said. “For me, it was a complete immersion into the trumpet, and I fell in love with it and loved it. He’s a doctor now and I’m a crazy musician.”
New Denver exhibit features works by famed children’s book author Maurice Sendak
In fact, it seems like he is extremely talented. At age 13, he performed with the Colorado Springs Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Denver Young Artists Orchestra, winning each group’s prestigious concerto competitions. Winners of the DYAO competition were rewarded with a performance with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, then conducted by renowned conductor Marin Alsop. She became a fan and invited Hennessy to play two more times, when she was 15 and 17.
Those performances led to even bigger opportunities, such as winning the National Trumpet Competition at the age of 17 and performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
“He’s a beautiful player, a melodic player,” said Curry Joyce, who played for Hennessy Six for many years. “He kind of learned from Wynton. You can hear an old-school, Wynton-esque approach to things. It’s a little bluesy, but beyond that. He’s also brought in modern sounds. His sound is They blend beautifully, the intonation is great, and the style is great.”
Hennessy studied trumpet and film music at Northwestern University, where he interned at 20th Century Fox and worked with director Ron Howard and composer Thomas Newman, a cousin of composer and singer Randy Newman, on the 2005 film Worked on the scoring stage while working on “Cinderella Man.” ”
He earned a master’s degree in promotion and photo scoring from the University of Southern California, where he ended up orchestrating episodes of the popular TV show “Lost.”
“You have a lot of power,” Hennessy said. “The hardest thing to learn in this field is to control that power. Sometimes I fall in love with what I write, but then what will the actual painting look like? It’s the cinematography, the dialogue, the story, the visuals, the acting. In some ways, the best scores are the ones you don’t even know are there.”
play all the time
After graduating, he lived in L.A. for a number of years and worked for a film composer before returning to Springs around 2012, where he met his wife and had a 4-year-old son. Nowadays, he composes for five or six films each year, but he also composes for his own projects such as Hennessy 6, and primarily performs original music, which is unusual for a jazz band. It is a choice.
Traveling exhibit centered on Muslim voices comes to Colorado Springs
“I enjoy having my own story as opposed to an arrangement of this or that jazz standard. I hope you enjoy the different time signatures,” he said.
“It can be fun to try, but it makes you analytical instead of heart-oriented. I love telling stories. It comes from conflict. I love work about perseverance. I have a hard time escaping it.”
That’s the Hennessy characteristic. He is not lazy or complacent. He is currently reinvigorating the Aries Brass Quintet, a high-level brass group founded by his trumpet teacher Joseph Doxey. The group performed around the world for 30 years before falling by the wayside. But when Doxie passed away last year, Hennessy relaunched the organization, targeting underserved populations such as Rocky Ford and areas where children and others can’t hear high-quality music. We decided to turn it into a non-profit organization.
“Kids look at it and realize this is relatable,” Hennessy said. “I went to the lesson and played the concerto, and Joe (Doxie) said let’s work on the beginning of it. He picked up the trumpet and played it, and I said amazing and how much I I learned that I have to work, and the only way to do that is to have access to it. You don’t get that by just watching the show.”
Hennessy still works on his craft, seeking perfection in performance and connection in composition.
“If you ask me if I’ve mastered the trumpet, it’s a journey that never ends,” he said.
“The moment you stop wanting to grow and get better, what’s the point?”
Contact the author: 636-0270
