In her liner notes for “Storyteller,” Helseth describes how, when playing song transcriptions, “you have to be even more expressive so that the song has meaning. You have to play them as though the audience can actually hear the words.”
Indeed, without lyrics, one focuses on the big tunes here, which include Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and Strauss’s “Wiegenlied,” both about the relationship between mother and child. It’s a theme that has special resonance for Helseth: Her mother is an amateur trumpeter who inspired her to take up the instrument as a child.
Helseth applies a liquid legato tone and commanding range to these…selections…Helseth brings some needed fresh
air to the trumpet. © 2012 WQXR (New York) Read complete review
