The High Altitude Musician
A guide to performing at higher elevations
Have you ever needed to perform or audition above 5,000 feet while living at a lower elevation? How do you compensate for this factor to still play your best? What lessons can we learn from high-altitude performance that apply to more typical concert settings—even if you never intend to perform at altitude?
To answer these questions, I launched The High Altitude Musician to find out how we can reach our full potential, not just at higher elevations, but in all concert situations. This page will give you the tools and resource that you need *but should not be taken as medical advice.*
Years of research, not just with high altitude wind-players, but also collaborating with athletes, doctors, coaches, and scientists, contributed to this project. For air support, I talked with other people who work a lot with breath like free divers, pulmonologists, runners, mountaineers, climbers, and cyclists.
As principal clarinetist for the Central City Opera (8,500 feet) and the Boulder Philharmonic (5,400 feet), I spent 23 years commuting from lower elevations at the University of Kansas. Whether ascending 8,000 feet for a single performance, playing weddings above 11,000 feet, or teaching my first college position in Laramie at 7,200 feet, I found a significant dearth of organized information to help performers navigate these altitude transitions.
My work as a mountain guide on Colorado’s 14ers—leading trips above 14,000 feet—revealed a crossover of skills that could provide the musical community with much-needed information on this subject. Having summited most of Colorado’s highest peaks and trained as a Wilderness First Responder, I combined my mountaineering experience with my background as a high-altitude ultramarathoner and triathlete to research the connection between musicians and physical conditioning.
To further explore the implications of playing at higher elevations, I played on some of the highest summits in North America, including Mt. Bierstadt (14,065 feet), Pikes Peak (14,115 feet), and Mount Audubon (13,229 feet), recently performing the highest recorded classical music concert in the Rockies on the summit of Mt. Elbert at 14,439 feet.
My resources are available through YouTube, Wilderness and Environmental Medicine (2026), tonebase, my upcoming book (The High Altitude Musician), the links below, and The High Altitude Clarinetist.
It is my hope that these resources can add to the health, conditioning, and productivity of our musical community.
