To hear his wife tell it, world-renowned trumpeter Ryan Anthony was still planning his next musical project even as his body succumbed to a rare form of cancer.

I know that he always wanted more, Niki Anthony says. Up until the day before he passed, he was talking about the next recording he wanted to do. Even though he knew it was unlikely hed ever get out of the hospital, he always lived with hope.

In talking with his friends and family, Ryan Anthony, who passed away at a Dallas hospital on June 23 at the age of 51, was unceasingly hopeful throughout his life. From his days growing up a trumpet prodigy in San Diego to his final performances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, he lived a life of filled with a sense of spirited optimism. A spirit he shared throughout a multifaceted career as a musician, educator and philanthropist.

From the time Ryan was born on May 17, 1969, people began to notice his innate attraction to music. Ryans older brother, RB Anthony, says that music was always playing in their familys East County home.

Music was with us from the beginning. We were both performing from an early age, says RB, who says Ryan began playing trumpet in elementary school. Our father had us with his music groups and out on marching fields from when we were 2 years old, so music was a natural thing to develop for us. We had some natural talent, but Ryan just knew what to do with it. Im a musician and I still enjoy it, but he knew how to practice it.

Ryans father, Roy, was the musical director at Mount Miguel High School in Spring Valley, where Ryan also attended. At home, Ryan and RB would dutifully listen to recordings of Doc Severinsen, as well as big band music and movie scores. At 16, Ryan won the Seventeen Magazine & General Motors Concerto Competition.

Even back then, he was probably one of the best musicians in California and had the awards to prove it, says local drummer Jeffrey Lee Hawthorne, who was good friends with Ryan in high school. His musicianship at 16, 17 years old was already so far superior to anyone else. We knew he was going places.

After graduating high school, Ryan received a four-year scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he earned two degrees. He went on to become a trumpet professor at the Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio.

Trumpeter Ryan Anthony

(Courtesy photo by Jeremy Lock)

One of Niki Anthonys earliest memories of Ryan was hearing him play trumpet at Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis in 1992, where she performed with the church choir.

You could just hear a different sound in his tone and phrasing, remembers Niki. It was like you could hear the story behind the music even though there werent any words. As a singer, I always related to music a lot through words and text, so it was really something for me to pay attention to an instrumentalist and hear the story there.

While Ryan and Niki didnt begin dating until a few years later he was living in Salt lake City and she in Memphis she says she knew from the early days of their relationship that Ryans chosen profession would likely mean a life on the road and having to move around.

Still, even after they were married in 1997 and Ryan began touring with prestigious ensembles such as the Canadian Brass in 2000, Niki says she always wanted to remain supportive when it came to Ryans musical dreams.

For me, it was always important to let him have that freedom so he could be who he was, Niki says. His music was important to a lot of people, and that was important to me, too.

A few years after his appointment to the Canadian Brass, the couple welcomed their first child, daughter Elizabeth (Lili). Four years later, they had a son, Rowan. At the same time, Ryan performed as a soloist with over 30 ensembles and played at dozens of music festivals all over the world.

Trumpeter Ryan Anthony

(Courtesy photo)

Life began to settle a bit for Ryan Anthony in 2004 when he accepted an invitation to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) as a guest principal trumpet. Within four years, he was promoted to principal trumpet in the orchestra.

When he first started playing with us, we quickly became aware of his extreme ability, both in his musicianship and his playing, says Kevin Finamore, a fellow trumpeter who met Ryan in 2005 when the two were performing together in the DSO.

The bigger the stage, the better he was, Finamore continues. Hes just a natural-born performer like no other.

Ryan Anthonys November 2012 diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a rare form of cancer affecting the white blood cells, was terminal. He visited multiple doctors, but they all agreed that Ryan had about three years to live. He made it almost to eight years.

I remember the day he was diagnosed. He called me, and he told me he had decided that it wasnt going to break his spirit, Finamore says. Even to the end, he had a smile on his face. He would play through the pain. He would walk onstage, totally miserable, and some of the best playing he did was when he felt horrible. It was amazing.

In that time, between stem cell transplants and multiple rounds of chemotherapy, he continued to perform with the Dallas Symphony and, in 2013, toured as the guest principal trumpet with the San Diego Symphonys tour of China. In 2016, he became a professor of trumpet at Southern Methodist Universitys Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas.

There was something endearing and extremely real about Ryan, says Samuel Holland, the dean of the Meadows School. He goes on to point out that many of Ryans students would go on to land prestigious jobs in music. They could see through his own life that there was more than one way, because he had this one career as a soloist and another career as a chamber musician, and another as an orchestral musician and, ultimately, a philanthropic leader.

The latter came in 2014 in the form of the Ryan Anthony Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds for blood cancer research. The organization would hold brass-based concerts called, appropriately enough, CancerBlows. Niki Anthony remembers the genesis of the foundation came when Ryan was recovering from his first stem cell transplant.

He began talking about how Doc Severinsen, Arturo Sandoval, and all these trumpet players hed played with, were calling him, Niki says. He told them that when he was healthy again, he just wanted to stand onstage with them and play again. We started joking about how a great name for this would be cancer blows and how that was funny, but then we thought why not do a concert? That would be a great celebration and a way to raise money.

The inaugural CancerBlows concerts in March 2015 featured performances from Sandoval and Severinsen, as well as members of the Canadian Brass and Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It raised over $1 million for various cancer charities.

For those who knew him, Ryans altruistic and hopeful outlook, even in the face of his own mortality, was what he was all about.

As CancerBlows became more of a thing and Ryan received more feedback from patients and their families saying that it helped them, that really fueled him, Niki says. That if he felt bad on a particular day, or didnt want to practice or play a concert, he would say, These people need me, too. For whatever reason, I have been given this, and I have a stage to provide a beacon of hope and comfort for them, and I should use it. They motivated him, and he motivated them in return.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Ryan Anthonys family plans to hold a public celebration of life at a later date. The family requests donations to CancerBlows and The Ryan Anthony Foundation.

Combs is a freelance writer.

Trumpeter Ryan Anthony

(Courtesy photo by Steve Roberts)

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Ryan Anthony: A local trumpet prodigy who went on to play big stages and raise funds for cancer research - The San Diego Union-Tribune