On Saturday, April 12 “Slide Show” held by music professor Eric Heidner will feature and honor the trombone. 

The event “Trombone Through The Ages” by City College music will be at 3 p.m. in the Fé Bland Forum on the West Campus. 

An honorable addition to this event will be known trombone player Alex Iles. Iles will be performing along with the student trombone players to help teach and inspire them to pursue their dreams and passions regarding instruments, especially the trombone. 

City College has had the privilege to be accompanied by Iles a few times in the past to help guide and motivate young musicians. 

Iles is an extremely accomplished musician working on A-list movies such as the recent “Star Wars” movies like “The Mandalorian”, as well as “The Simpsons”, “Frozen”, “Coco” and “La La Land”. 

City College has its own trombone choir that was founded 12 years ago, following up a few years ago even a junior choir which included junior high students and high school students. 

This is a free event for all to see the art of the trombone in action, performing songs from the Middle Ages. 

Having Iles there to both perform, teach and inspire gives aspiring performers a professional outlet to receive feedback 

“He’s this fount of knowledge,” Heidner said. 

Having Iles return to City College and perform was a recurring event pre COVID-19, once the pandemic hit not much was happening. People’s spirits were crushed, but not much motivation was lost since most of the club’s practices were done over Zoom. 

“For a while we were running virtually over Zoom which was a mess,” Heidner said. 

Heidner went into detail about how on Zoom everyone is on very different frequencies and practice wasn’t really practice since no one could really be on the same beat or tempo. 

“This has become an incredible success story,” Heidner said about the process. 

Last year, Heidner put on a Hollywood event inspired by Iles’s achievements all across Hollywood. They performed numbers from “Star Wars”, “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Avengers”. They’re planning on putting on a show for “The Lord of the Rings” in the future.

This year is strictly a medieval piece. The trombone has been around for centuries, one of the oldest brass instruments. This year the trombone choir will recite Ludwig Van Beethoven, Guillaume de Machaut, Giovanni Gabrieli, J.S. Bach, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz von Suppe, James Van Heusen, African American Spiritual, and Igor Stravinsky. 

Ranging from the years back from the 1300s to modern day. 

The event was created not only to inspire young musicians, but everyone who wants to learn or pick back up on music. 

“Trombone Through The Ages” is a public event for all.