Purchases at the IHS Illinois Symposium

A horn symposium is a great place to check out new and unfamiliar older horn related items. At past symposiums I have certainly purchased more, but when you get down to it I personally have a lot of older publications (for example at least half of what McCoy’s Horn Library sells) so I was not looking to buy that much.

I tried very few horns at the event, I am not in the market now (need to sell a couple!) but I am sure there were people at the event only wanting to try horns who did get their fill! Practically every maker was there and I know there were many very fine horns to test. Of the horns I tried I had the most fun trying a pre-war nickel silver Horner model Kruspe on the Ken Pope table, what a classic horn.

I did however buy two mouthpieces. The last few years I have been playing Laskey mouthpieces and he has introduced a version of his mouthpiece with a European shank. I used one of them, an 825JE, right away on Wagner tuba on the closing concert; for sure that mouthpiece fits the instrument better. What it has is a larger shank with a slightly different taper. If you play for example an Alexander and want to try Laskey mouthpieces, buy the new version with the European shank. There were many other great mouthpieces at the event to try/purchase, but again unless it is new like these I probably own it already.

One thing I have seen as a seller is there are two categories of customers for horn stuff. One category is “early adopters” who will buy almost anything new. Then there are the more long-term shoppers who look and buy later, maybe to have their school make the purchase later. I am more of an early adopter, so the few pieces of music I purchased were new to me and related to needs in my teaching and playing. (And I completely sold out all the copies I brought along of the new Breathing Gym Daily Workouts DVD to early adopters).

In relation to my teaching I purchased a new publication Accuracy Studies for the French Hornist, Op. 158 by Richard Burdick and from the same table The Oliveros Interval Studies by Pauline Oliveros (Burdick’s Edition). They look like interesting products. I also purchased two Schumann works arranged for 8 part horn choir by Cynthia Carr (Arundel Music), arranged in the same general manner that Verne Reynolds did his Cantos series of horn choir arrangements. It is for two 4-part horn choirs who play in a somewhat antiphonal manner. I really look forward to trying these out in the fall.

My final purchases also related to Verne Reynolds, in the form of two newly published works of his for horn and piano, Fantasy-Etudes, Vol. V and Sonata Concertare, available in a very clean new edition from Prairie Dawg Press. They both look quite interesting, I will play one of these in the fall, and it is worth noting that this publisher has several more new publications of works and arrangements of Reynolds in the pipeline, be watching for more.

On the Saturday morning of the event I was on a panel discussion session with other publishers, and the owner of Prairie Dawg Press had a great comment. We play many works that are not that great by foreign composers while truly great works by American composers lie unpublished or out of print. Small, specialty publishers such as what he is doing is the future of horn publications, keep your eyes open, there are great works out there that are only now gradually becoming available.