Tomorrow night is the National Symphony Orchestra’s Season Opening Ball and Concert. This concert rings in the 78th year of the National Symphony, and my 19th year as its bass trombonist. My rudimentary mathematics indicate that sometime in 2010, I will have been the NSO’s bass trombone player for 25% of its existence. Whooppee! Maybe they will make a champagne toast to me at the Ball 
Everyone once in a while, I get to play with my favorite section. We all get along fabulously, are never out of tune with each other and are particularly handsome, if I may say. Here is a recent section photo:
All kidding aside, there at least a handful of works in the mainstream orchestral repertoire which call for bass trombone only, such as:
Chopin: Piano Concerto #1 and #2
Strauss: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Nielsen: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra
The NSO will perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto #2 with the amazing Yvgeny Kissin at this season opener, and I am pretty pumped to be the only trombonist onstage accompanying this great artist. Not to disparage my most excellent NSO trombone section colleagues, who are equally wonderful and almost as handsome
There is just something about being the only trombone player onstage with a full symphony orchestra which is simultaneously frightening and empowering. I had my first opportunity to play section solo while a student at New England Conservatory. One of the flute students, Ashildur Haraldsdottir, now a flutist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, had won the concerto competition with her performance of the Nielsen Flute Concerto. It was the one and only time I have every played this work 
The next year, Doug Yeo was out sick when the Boston Symphony Orchestra was to play Strauss’ Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme under Edo DeWaardt. I got the call from the BSO personnel manager to come in and play that week for Doug, and it remains one of the musical highlights of my lifetime. That Strauss work is essentially chamber orchestra in size, and the bass trombone part is exposed at every turn. To share the stage with such BSO past greats as Harold Wright (clarinet), Sherm Walt (bassoon), Doriot Dwyer (flute), Al Genovese (oboe), Chuck Kavalovsky (horn) and Tim Morrison (trumpet) was a dream come true. Holding my own with them as a solo player gave me a real sense of legitimacy, and I believe it was the pure nakedness of the experience which made it so incredibly rewarding. A great, full section experience is fine as well, but this was extra special.
The bass trombone part to the Chopin Piano Concerto #2 is largely an extension of the the double bass part. In our configuration at the NSO, the basses line the back wall directly in back of me, so I get a tremendous wall of bass sound coming at me from a rockin’ bull fiddle section. On occasion the bass trombone plays with the the 2 trumpets and 2 horns, but mostly serves as projecting bass voice. Here is the part:
With any luck, I will have more chances in my career to play both the Strauss and the Nielsen again. Once is definitely not enough for these gems.