Waking Hours

Graham Hastings, principal trumpeter with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra

I’m not a morning person. I need a bit of time to get going. I live in Ballinteer with my wife, Orla, and our younger son, Ronan, is with us at the moment. He’s a zoologist. He was working in the Kalahari Desert studying mole rats for a year. Our other son, Conor, is in London. He started out playing the trumpet and now he plays a Renaissance instrument called the cornetto.

I play the principal trumpet for the

RTE National Symphony Orchestra. We rehearse in the National Concert Hall. On a normal day, I do a crossword, and then I travel into work by two wheels — either on electric push bike or motorbike. I refuse to use the car, if possible.

I stop for a takeaway coffee on the way, at Thru The Green, which is a shipping container in Dundrum. This is seriously nice coffee.

If I need to carry the trumpet, I use the motorbike and it just about goes in the box on the bike. I have a spare trumpet at home, which I use for practise. In fact, I have five different trumpets; they are all in different keys and different types.

We start at 10am until 3.15pm, with a break for lunch. Someone once said that rehearsals are where you learn everyone else’s part. It’s so true. They should be where you learn how to fit what you have with what everybody else has. So you should know your own part before the first rehearsal.

Then we spend time fitting it together. Every conductor has a different style, so even though you may have played a piece 20 times, it always turns out to be a totally new experience.

There is nothing quite like sitting on a stage when the conductor and orchestra have joined together. At the moment, Jaime Martin is our principal conductor. He is incredibly enthusiastic.

My musical life started at school — they had a brass band. At 11, I told my mother that I wanted to be a trumpet player. I always knew that I wanted to play in a symphony orchestra, even when I didn’t really know what it meant. I love the fact that the trumpet can ride over the whole sound of the orchestra, if called for. You can make so many different sounds on the trumpet — really warm, or really strident and demanding. For me, it’s the best job in the world. It is thrilling.

I joined the orchestra in 1981, so it’s nearly 40 years ago. The last thing we did was on March 12. We did a rehearsal for

which has an amazing trumpet solo, but then, half-way through, we were told to go home. That was the start of coronavirus.

It’s very odd not checking in every day with the orchestra. I tell people that I’m rehearsing for retirement. I can’t practise every day because my wife is an essential worker and she has to work from home. She’s on the phone all the time and if I’m practising the trumpet, I get shouted at a lot. She works three days a week in the office and that’s when I can practise.

When it comes to concerts and coronavirus, I think we’re still at the ‘nobody knows’ stage. Every concert hall is different. You can’t keep physical distance in an orchestra and then certain wind instruments spread the problem as well, as they blow across the hall. We are doing little performances online and I did Bugler’s Holiday with the trumpet section, just to remind people that we are still there. But I really miss playing in an orchestra with an audience.

When I am not playing the trumpet, I volunteer with Blood Bikes East. We do an out-of-hours free medical service for the HSE. Since Covid-19 started, the amount of work that we do has rocketed.

We have transported thousands of Covid-19 tests from hospitals in Cork, Galway and Letterkenny to the National

Virus Lab in UCD. There is a group in Galway and Cork and we meet them half-way and bring it in. The Covid-19 tests are boxed up and secured and taken to the virus lab. We also deliver PPE. We pick up the frames for the face masks and they are taken down to Cork and sterilised and fitted with the actual shield. They come back to Dublin and are given to nursing homes.

We also deliver breast milk which has been donated by mums in Ireland. It is transported up to the milk bank — there is only one in Enniskillen — and they process it to make sure it’s safe. Everything that is donated from the Republic comes back to the Republic. I enjoy meeting the mums and delivering milk to intensivecare units and meeting the marvellous nurses.

I do Blood Bikes East as a way of saying thanks. It’s a link with our son Ronan. He was born prematurely and he was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the National Maternity Hospital,

Holles Street. It was a scary beginning.

“It’s thrilling when the orchestra and conductor join together on stage”

RTE were absolutely amazing because they gave me time off to look after Conor, as he was under two.

One day, as I was out driving, a Blood Bike went past me on the M50. It planted a seed. I applied, did my advanced driving test and joined in September 2015. Now I am their director.

Normally, I’d do one shift a month for Blood Bikes East, but now that we can’t rehearse it’s a great way to keep occupied. In fact, it’s been difficult to get a shift, because everybody is in the same position. They have been furloughed and they all want to be out on the bike. The spirit of volunteering has been amazing.