SEHW 2009 in Review

First, a big note of thanks to Travis Bennett and his students and colleagues at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC for hosting a great Southeast Horn Workshop this past weekend. This is the largest of the annual regional horn workshops, and this year had over 300 registered participants.

Every horn event has many notable things, and no one person can see it all. A few notes from my perspective, in more or less the order they occurred.

The opening concert. I really enjoyed hearing the brass quintet version of The Casbah of Tetouan by Kerry Turner played well on the opening concert by the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet, the faculty quintet at WCU. We don’t hear much brass quintet work at horn events–I would enjoy hearing more. I also especially enjoyed the Basler Divertimento for four horns performed by a quartet of past and present horn faculty at WCU (Stephen Lawson, Paul Basler, Alan Mattingly, and Travis Bennett), something not seen often at horn workshops.

My performances. They went well. I played the Bach Air on tenor Wagner tuba on the opening concert and on the very next concert played the Telemann Concerto on descant. A bit of a switch to make but it worked out fine and good music was made!

Roger Kaza rules. I have heard plenty of artist recitals at horn events and I must say the recital by Roger Kaza was among the best. Potential workshop hosts please take note; he should be featured at more horn events! The whole program was very enjoyable, but I did want to add one note on the Czerny Brilliant Fantasy No. 1. This was also performed last year at the SEHW by Eric Ruske. The work was originally published for piano with horn or violin. Ruske actually performed the violin part, and his version of this work is published with the violin part as the horn part. Kaza performed the horn part. I think it sounds much better with the horn part. This version is available from Hans Pizka.

My Wagner tuba session. I had a large classroom as full as it really could be for my Wagner tuba session at 9:00 AM on a Saturday. Thank you to those who came, it was especially nice to put together a couple sections and have at it, and thanks once again to Travis Bennett for arranging for the set of tuben from the Atlanta Symphony. These were also used later in the workshop on the final concert.

Horn and gamelan! When I was a MM student at Eastman another student found a recording of Lou Harrison Main Bersama-Sama (“Playing Together”) for horn and gamelan. I later purchased a cassette tape (!) of this recording (CRI label) and have listened to it many times but never thought I would ever hear it live at a horn event. Many congratulations to Alan Mattingly (former WCU faculty, now at the University of Nebraska) for playing this work; a very, very cool piece that I don’t believe has ever been performed live at any other horn workshop and frankly may never be again! Which is a shame as this work is completely unique in our repertoire and again very cool. And, for me again it was breathtaking as I have listened to this work many times but never had the visual of what the gamelan looked like with the horn on stage. [So, you are wondering, what is a gamelan anyway? It is a type of percussion ensemble used in traditional music in Indonesia. More here from the Wikipedia.]

You can’t go to everything. I was trying also to run a booth for Horn Notes Edition so I could not hear many of the concerts and only saw parts of a couple master classes. I will say though that one performance in particular, right after the gamelan work, I really wished I had heard and I would have stayed for if I had read my program properly (the performer, James Boldin, was a former student from when I was at Brevard). But you can’t do it all.

People. At workshops you interact with many people. Several old friends I was very happy to see and talk with again. Even though I am in Arizona now, the southeast does seem like home with the years at Brevard and also in Nashville. It was great to see former Brevard students and also hear Leslie Norton play again, who I performed with in the Nashville Symphony. Also, right after the last concert, I was able to speak to one of my very first horn students, Keith Grush, who I taught when he was a sophomore in high school and is now a band director in the area. People are a big reason to go to workshops.

Trying horns. Another part of any horn workshop is trying horns! I was surprised by the two instruments that most “spoke” to me this time; it was not what I expected. My favorite horn I tried was a Finke Brendansingle B-flat with F extension. A bit exotic, they don’t make many of these, I doubt many tired it that saw it on the table and frankly I probably would not have tried it except for my recent B-flat horn experiments. This was a very nice horn, light, responsive. The other horn that spoke to me was a used Schmid triple. I have tried these before a number of times and always struggled a bit as the F side seemed rather stuffy. However, if I approach it not so much like a super double horn but rather a super descant horn, centering technique on the B-flat horn, it felt rather nice. I have noted that many Schmid triple players I have seen focus their technique around the B-flat horn. If I was following the fingers of Roger Kaza correctly he was using quite a bit of B-flat horn on his Schmid triple on his recital Friday night. It is an interesting topic to ponder. I am still pretty double horn oriented, but I will keep on my project of improving my B-flat horn technique.

Buying stuff. And I bought stuff, the most notable probably being a copy of the new book by Jeffrey Agrell, Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians. I will blog on this sometime in the future.

Low range. Jeff Nelson on Saturday night presented a very different recital than Roger Kaza, but also a great show with plenty of surprises. Besides quality and musicality another thing it had in common with the Friday recital was he showed a lot of technical facility, especially in and out of the low range. This really is the key, any students out there reading this, you have to get your technique up and your low range must be very together to make it as a performer.

Maxime-Alphonse. The topic of etudes to work on to improve articulations came up in the master class given by Jeff Nelson on Sunday morning, and he mentioned the Maxime-Alphonse etudes. The student in the class was not familiar with the book, something actually I have seen too–some teachers just don’t use these great, standard etudes. Talking to Jeff Nelson later, I told him the little known fact that actually Maxime-Alphonse is a pseudonym! I broke the story on this “international man of mystery” in two previous blog posts, here and especially here. Any DMA student out there up for a good project?

The quartet in red shoes. The winners of the collegiate horn quartet competition were a group of sophomores and juniors from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. On the closing concert their tuning note sounded a little tentative, but then they kicked in and sounded great! Bravo!

Bohemian Rhapsody. I have wanted to play this for a while, and in the last concert I had my chance to play horn 16 (Wagner tuba 8, actually) on the version of Bohemian Rhapsody recorded on the London Horn Sound CD. Jeff Nelson was on horn 1, Roger Kaza conducted, the rest of the ensemble being horn professors and also military hornists that had been featured on an earlier recital and panel discussion (that I had to miss due to my Horn Notes Edition booth). The crowd loved it! What a great closer! If you missed it, it was almost as good as the Mnozil Brass version on YouTube. And, for a good laugh, check out Weird Al’s take on it as well.

The 2010 Southeast Horn Workshop will be March 26-28 on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. The host will be a former student of mine from when I taught at the Crane School of Music, Heidi Lucas. If you are in the area it will be an event to get on the books and be at. Congratulations again to Travis Bennett for hosting a great event.

UPDATE: Bohemian Rhapsody from the final concert is now on YouTube.