Insight
A series in which musicians give us insight into the background of one of their recordings
Lost and Found
by Vance Thompson
Grammy-nominated trumpeter Vance Thompson is the founder and director of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra in Tennessee. Since 2017 he has been battling the effects of a neurological disorder called Focal Dystonia, a movement disorder that causes involuntary, sustained muscle contractions and abnormal postures in a single part of the body, often triggered by specific activities like writing (writer's cramp) or playing music (musician's dystonia). it became increasingly obvious that no amount of practice or physical therapy would be able to overcome the impairments that were compromising his ability to play his trumpet.
​
Looking back just a short while ago, here is Vance with the Orchestra in 2020 soloing on trumpet for the standard I Should Care with guest Christian McBride (bass). Greg Tardy is the saxophone soloist:
Just when all seemed lost, Vance found a new path that led him back to making music, and the result is Lost And Found, his first album as a leader in over a decade. With the album, Vance makes his re-debut – not as a veteran trumpet player, but as a newly minted vibraphone player.
Two weeks after the day he borrowed a pair of mallets from a colleague at the University of Tennessee he was calling friends to join him for informal jam sessions. “It was kind of amazing, but it didn't take too long before I sounded like myself. It did take some adjustment – a wind instrument can do all kinds of things that you can't do with vibraphone, but the same is true in the opposite direction: you can do things on a vibraphone that you can't do on trumpet, like play multiple notes at the same time or play whole chords. The vibraphone makes a beautiful sound almost completely on its own and there are certain things that just feel natural to do once you start playing.”
​
Here is a brief introduction to the album:​
During the time he was struggling – even working with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra became a painful reminder of what he’d lost – the one aspect of Vance’s career that eased the pain was his teaching. No longer able to play in lessons, he devised new techniques to interact with students, and continued to evolve conceptually. That development, at least as much as the change in instruments, is what led him to record Lost and Found.
“In a weird way, I felt like I had improved as a musician during the period where I wasn't playing. Throughout that time, I thought, ‘If I could just play the trumpet, I think I’d be better than I was when I stopped playing.’ I feel freer as an improviser on the vibes than I ever remember feeling as a trumpet player, and I wanted to document my evolution as a musician.”
​
Listen to the track Bud Powell from the album:
Vance had started writing Lost And Found, the album's title track, just before the onset of his Dystonia. He had set it aside to focus on his recovery then picked it up again with the vibraphone. The piece seems to chart his path, from the tenuous pace of the introductory piano/vibes duet, through the gentle discovery as the full band enters into a bolder tempo under the piano solo.
As the album's publicity notes say: "With Lost and Found, Vance Thompson proves to be an inspiration in his own right – vibrantly demonstrating that even when all seems lost, there remains hope – in however unexpected a form – somewhere to be found.
​
Lost and Found was released on 16th January 2026 on the Moondo label and is available through Bandcamp here where you can find details and samples of the music. Vance Thompson's website is here.
© Sandy Brown Jazz 2026.2