Benicia’s Shane O’Brien stands outside the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The trumpet player recently played a series of concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy of Don O’Brien)

For most musicians, playing at Carnegie Hall would be the highlight of their careers. For trumpeter Shane O’Brien— who has played Carnegie twice—, it is just another stop on the tour for the Benicia native. However, it was still a great experience for him.

“Every musician dreams of playing Carnegie Hall,” he said. “It was really unbelievable the first time I was there, sitting on stage and seeing how high the balconies go up and the amount of people showing up to watch you, but I’ve had similar experiences like Carnegie at tons of world-class halls.”

Among those halls are the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Smetana Hall in Prague, Lincoln Center for the Arts, Metropolitan Opera and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. where O’Brien just concluded a series of concerts as a finalist in the National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute’s Concerto Competition and performed Henri Tomasi’s “Concerto for Trumpet.”

“We had our last concert on Sunday,” O’Brien said. “It went a great, a lot of positive comments and feedback. It’s my first time playing Kennedy Center too. It’s always a great experience playing in a new hall, learning the hall, learning the acoustics and absorbing it all.”

How has O’Brien managed to play all these historic halls? It could have to do with the fact that music was instilled in him at a very early age. His father, Don, was the band and choir director for Benicia’s elementary schools for many years and passed that onto his children.

“My brother started playing trumpet when he was in fifth grade,” he said. “At that time, my sister was in third grade, and I was in kindergarten, so we all started around the same time.”

O’Brien was in the school band at Mary Farmar Elementary School, but he said he did not take it too seriously until around sixth grade when he joined the National Youth Orchestra. At 13, he was the youngest trumpet player invited to the San Francisco Symphony program where he received sponsorship funding to perform in venues in Germany, the Netherlands and New York City— all by the age of 15.

“I started to fall in love with music, and since then I’ve been on a steady incline,” he said.

O’Brien attended Benicia High School for the first two years. Starting with his junior year, he attended the Interlochen Music Academy, a boarding school for artistically inclined students in Northwest Michigan, on a full scholarship. At 17, O’Brien was offered a scholarship at Juilliard, but he turned it down in favor of the Cleveland Institute of Music to study with acclaimed trumpeter Michael Sachs, the Principal Trumpet for the Cleveland Orchestra.

O’Brien sees playing music as a great way to meet new people.

“You’re bringing together over a hundred young people just to play some sheet music,” he said. “It’s really magical what happens. All these people become one instrument, and we play a beautiful masterpiece. It’s a really surreal experience to be a part of.”

O’Brien credits a lot of his success in being able to play prestigious venues to the people he has known, namely the groups he has performed with and the teachers he has had.

“A lot of my teachers have great connections,” he said. “If you know one person, you know a lot of people.”

Ultimately, O’Brien hopes to play in a professional orchestra somewhere in America and has also considered the possibility of becoming a teacher, as a lot of professional musicians are also educators. He encourages others pursuing music to listen to as many compositions as they can.

“There’s so much out there that I feel is really under-appreciated,” he said. “Music is something everyone can understand. It’s the universal language that bonds everyone together. The more people listen to music, the more we get along. It sounds a little cheesy and cliche, but honestly, I think people need to listen to music more and enjoy it, make it a larger part of life.”

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