“Practice, practice, practice” — that’s what Gil Cline and Chris Cox tell students when asked for advice about pursuing music professionally.

Cline, a music professor at Humboldt State University, and Cox, Eureka High School’s instrumental music director, are accomplished musicians.

They will be the featured performers at Eureka Symphony’s first concert of its 2007-08 season today and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts, 412 G St. in Eureka. The symphony is conducted by Carol Jacobson.

They will perform Antonio Vivaldi’s “Concerto in C Major for Two Trumpets, Strings and Basso Continuo.”

Eureka Symphony will also present Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Symphony No. 86” and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 1.”

Cline and Cox teach burgeoning musicians of different ages and competency levels, but regardless of age or skill, musicianship takes work, they said.

“The main advice is to prepare well, practice frequently and regularly, but more importantly, to listen to as many recordings and live concerts, of course, as you can, and of the types of music you aspire to play,” Cline said.

“Work hard now,” Cox said. “You know, if this is truly what you want to do, you’ve got to go into it full-bore.

“If you’re going to go in that direction, you’ve got to practice, and it can’t be a half hour a day.”

Cox and Cline have performed together in the past, but never together as featured trumpet soloists, Cox said.

The pair is performing on baroque trumpets.

“Ah, the Vivaldi ‘double’ — that is, double concerto, concerto for two solo instruments,” Cline said.

Cox is playing Cline’s copy of a 1715 silver trumpet. Cline is playing a copy of his own 1667 silver/copper trumpet.

Both were handmade by trumpet maker David Edwards, a friend of Cline who resides in London, England.

Each has performed with the Eureka Symphony previously, and each agrees the existence of this group is “important.”

The ensemble was established in 2003.

“My former HSU colleague Ken Hannaford, who tragically was taken by brain cancer, had the vision for a civic orchestra in Eureka and established this group, which is now renamed but essentially the same orchestra in lineage and heritage,” Cline said.

Cox said, to him, this group is an “outlet for locals to play good music.”

He said he has been involved with community orchestras for the past 15 years, including in Washington.

“It shows that you don’t have to stop playing music after high school,” he said. “There are outlets for you to play at all levels as an adult.”