Malcolm McNab

Film and television soundtracks feature Malcolm McNab's trumpet. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 25 March 1943 and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, he began the instrument at nine with his father, Boyd McNab, then studied with the Pasadena teacher Walter Laursen and with James Stamp; he was playing in the Pasadena Symphony at fourteen and became its principal trumpet under Richard Lert. After touring with the San Francisco Ballet and service in the United States Army’s West Point Band he entered the Los Angeles studios, where he held the first trumpet chair for John Williams’s Los Angeles recordings from 1973 to 2011 and recorded classical repertoire with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York City Opera. The popular side of the work brought Dionne Warwick, Peggy Lee, Chicago and the Carpenters, and a long stretch with Frank Zappa, including the Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra between 1975 and 1988. His own albums Exquisite (2006) and The Infinite Trumpet (2010) include his transcription of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.