This philosophy has served him well with the APO and its various projects, including the recent Remix the Orchestra workshops and concerts.
Grapes, who confesses to having some "old school hip-hop on my iPod", found this South Auckland experience a real treat. "It was so challenging because we were all well out of our comfort zone yet able to form relationships with people we would not otherwise have met."
Looking back, he feels the geographical isolation of growing up on Australia's West Coast turned out to be advantageous. "It was a little like Haydn working in rural Esterhazy," he explains. "We were so locked away we had to find our own thing, which was certainly the case with Perth's jazz musicians."
Grapes singles out Louis Armstrong, but more for his vocals than his instrumental powess, although he is "envious of the way jazz musicians put their personality on every note they play".
"It's something we can aspire to as classical musicians, but we're limited by what's on the page. Everything is so much more prescribed. Although I'd like to think that as an orchestra we go a little bit wild, within the limits, every time we play something."
Not surprising, for a trumpeter, Grapes' favourite composers come from the last hundred years or so, headed by Mahler. And there are even more testing moments than the nail-biting fanfare that opens the Austrian's Fifth Symphony.
"The Posthorn solo from the Third is really tough. You just hope audiences can't hear just how taxing it is. And you need a good five-minute breather after playing 'Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle' from Pictures at an Exhibition on piccolo trumpet."
Two years in the ranks of the Verbier Festival Orchestra ("a summer break in a beautiful Swiss skiing village playing with some amazing musicians") included some inspirational Strauss, conducted by Charles Dutoit. There was also "a terrifying moment in Zarathustra when a camera was swivelling around to catch me coming in with a difficult solo. They like to see the fear in the player's eyes," he laughs.
On Thursday, Grapes will be the centre of attention playing the Arutiunian Concerto he first met up with as a teenager. He enthuses over its "wonderful colours, from the fullest fortissimo to the most delicate pianissimo", but points out there are not many 20th-century works with such memorable melodies. "You'll walk out humming the tunes," he says. "There aren't many concertos that that happens with."
Performance
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday at 8pm
