Renaissance Man : Graduate Gets Fellowship to Learn Art of Making Baroque Horn

The Thomas J. Watson Foundation is paying Doug Dunston $13,000 to get out of town.

Way out of town.

Basel, Switzerland, to be exact, where Dunston plans to spend a year learning the ancient art of trumpet making and living on “bread, beer and chocolate.”

Dunston, 21, was recently graduated from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont with a degree in physics. Although he plans eventually to seek a Ph.D. in the subject, the Watson fellowship will give him a chance to to do something “totally out of the mainstream,” Dunston said.

He has obtained an unpaid apprenticeship in the Basel workshop of Rainer Egger, who works with a four-person staff to painstakingly handcraft fewer than 20 baroque trumpets each year.

Dunston, a native of Glenview, Ill., said his world travels so far have taken him as far as, well, Tijuana.

He said he doesn’t know what to expect from his year abroad. Egger has found him an apartment near the shop, and Dunston has been taking intensive classes in German so that he can communicate with his new employer when he starts work Sept. 1.

“I can’t imagine how it’s going to be,” Dunston said. “But I’m ready to accept whatever Europe throws my way.”

The Watson fellowship program, founded in 1968, supports independent foreign research and travel for recent graduates of 55 private colleges and universities around the nation. Candidates must be nominated by their schools. Dunston is one of 76 graduating seniors, including six from San Gabriel Valley colleges, to be selected this year.

“He is a very dynamic young man,” said Steven Licata, executive director of the Watson Foundation, with headquarters in Providence, R.I. “He is creative and personable. . . . You’re instantly impressed by him.”

The goal of the fellowship, Licata said, is to create a Wanderjahr-- a year to wander and explore.

“The proposal has to be something that is personally relevant, not necessarily unusual,” Licata said.

“Basically, they give you $13,000 to get out of the country for a year,” deadpanned Dunston, who has been playing brass instruments since he was in the fourth grade. During his four years at Harvey Mudd, he played in the Claremont Chamber Orchestra and the Pomona Symphony.

“I remember my first concert. I was so excited,” Dunston recalled of his elementary school debut. “I played really harsh and loud, but I played the blues. . . . What a great feeling.”

Dunston said he has a particular affinity for the baroque trumpet--a long, straight tube with a “magical air about it” used primarily in Renaissance and baroque music.

Although not widely played since the invention of valve trumpets in 1813, baroque trumpets are regaining popularity among musicians who want to capture the original sound.

“There is a lot of life in these instruments,” Dunston said. “It’s such a great feeling to play Mozart or Bach on the same instrument that was used then.”

Dunston’s plan for his Wanderjahr is one of the most lighthearted of the proposals submitted by 1990 Watson Fellowship recipients from San Gabriel Valley colleges.

The other local fellows are Chris Billingham of Scripps College, who will travel to Sweden, Norway and Australia to study leadership roles of women in business; Jennifer Finlay of Pitzer College, who will study the roles of ethnic Chinese women in Singapore and Malaysia; Laurie Guggenheim of Pomona College, who will study the sociology of deaf communities in France, Germany and England; Jennifer Ann Low of Caltech, who will study the epidemiology and sociology of AIDS in Rwanda, Zaire and Belgium, and Ivan Svitek of Claremont McKenna College, who will study East European refugee camps in Austria, England and Germany.

“The project isn’t the most important thing,” said Margo Berman, a member of the Watson selection committee at Harvey Mudd College and a former recipient of the fellowship. “The greatest benefit is the increased sense of independence that you get.

“You’re not going to be in a university setting, where everything is planned on schedule. . . . You’re going to be completely on your own, learning to survive in a new country.”

Still, Dunston does have one particular goal in mind--a project that will combine his musical and scientific talents. In Switzerland, he hopes to design for himself a “very unique trumpet” that will be “a symphony in itself.”