What I Sounded Like 25 Years Ago

On January 9, 1984, I made a trek down to Wichita, Kansas from my home in Emporia. Purpose: to make an audition tape for graduate school auditions. I was then a senior at Emporia State University, but by then I had also studied regularly for a year and a half privately with Nicholas Smith, then and now Principal hornist of the Wichita Symphony and Professor of horn at Wichita State University.

One of my break projects this year was to get set up to convert recordings on cassette tapes to MP3s. Yesterday I finally got things working and organized my archive of somewhat fragile tapes. One that caught my eye as a good place to start was a tape I had not listened to in at least 15 years, my audition tape for grad schools. After I pulled it out to start making the MP3 I realized that the recording was going to be exactly 25 years old the next day.

Dr. Smith helped me in several ways in making this tape. Besides the preparation of the works, he reserved the room (the choir room at Wichita State), and arranged for a professional pianist and also a recording engineer.

The recording holds up pretty well. I started with Mozart 2, movement 1, then recorded the first movement of the Franz Strauss Op. 8 Concerto, and finally the first movement of the Bernhard Heiden Sonata. For those interested in equipment, at the time I was playing on a 500,000 series Conn 8D and probably a C-10 mouthpiece.

In honor of the date being exactly 25 years ago today, below are links to two of the recordings. Enjoy! I was at a small college and had worked out a major embouchure change the previous year. If you are at least this good as a college senior you have potential to make it on horn.

Bernhard Heiden Sonata

Franz Strauss Concerto Op. 8

I won the concerto competition at Emporia State on the Franz Strauss either shortly before or shortly after this recording was made and I still like how it sounds. I also really like much about the Bernhard Heiden, although there are a couple big clams right toward the end. I was getting tired; we did it all in one session. Thank you Dr. Smith! And be sure to also check out his website.