 Tristan Bunkowsky Matharu...written by Heidi Bunkowsky (Tristan's Mom)
Trumpet, Vocals
Tristan is a born musician. He started performing when he was three with the evolving Family Spectrum group. His first instrument was a little set of congo drums. He’d sit at the back of the stage and play along to the songs. He had a very “interesting” sense of rhythm that caused us to stuff those drums full of towels to deaden the sound. After a while I realized that he was attempting to follow the patterns of the melody instead of the rhythm. He has a beautiful sense of pitch and can sing melody and harmony lines with a lot of ease.
When he was five, his brother Brandon, brought home a trumpet for his mandatory participation in the school band. It soon became obvious that Tristan could blow it better than his brother (who had ZERO interest in this instrument) and thus Tristan’s journey as a trumpet player began. He started taking some lessons at the U of M with a young teacher, Phil Collins, who worked with him from an ear perspective as Tristan was too young to start mastering reading music (he still couldn’t read period)! Tristan likes to practice together with me, but he also likes to FIGHT with me during these sessions. As a result they often become stormy, but whenever push comes to shove, Tristan always asks me to please keep working with him.
All the trying times are balanced out by some fabulous days when Tristan really works hard and blows some amazing things on his horn. He has an amazing sense of jazz timing and rifts and he hears so many things in his head that I can see him wanting to execute, but still needing a higher skill set to enable him to do this. I keep encouraging him that if he wants to be a showman, he’s got to have to goods to back this up. This means that you have to PRACTICE! Self-motivation in this area is still in the development stage and time will tell how committed he will be to becoming a truly skilful musician. I am strongly encouraging him to learn to play an instrument that he can play accompaniment on in order to facilitate writing music down the road. I keep encouraging him to try the piano, but I’m not sure where this will lead.
Tristan has always been a showman. He loves to perform for a crowd and gives the people who watch him a lot of enjoyment with his enthusiasm and showmanship. Because he is so much younger than his cousins in the trumpet section of Legacy he has to stand on a chair to get to their height while playing ensemble. He really leans on Graham to help him along when they are playing together and I love to watch Tristan intently watching Graham’s fingering positions in order to play along with him. Both Graham and Matthew have to exercise a lot of patience playing with someone so much younger than themselves.
Tristan loves to be part of the band set-up and tear down and does his allotted tasks with a lot of attention and skill. Grampa taught him how to wrap cables so that they lay flat when he was really little and you can always see him working hard at the end of shows helping to pack up all the gear.
Tristan loves Monday night practices. Whenever he’s not involved in a tune, he’s either outside jumping on the trampoline with one of his cousins, playing with Rhiannon or just running around having fun. Playing in Legacy has become an important part of his identity and whenever he meets someone new I can always hear him talking about the band and his involvement with it. I expect great things from him musically when he is grown. He’s got great talent.
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