Review: Two New Horn-Related Blogs

Jonathan West and Bruce Richards get their bloggity-blog on.

Two new and noteworthy horn-related blogs have appeared on the radar that are worth pointing out.

The first is called Horn Thoughts and is authored by Jonathan West. The description in the title describes it best:

One of my passions is music, I play the french horn in a number of amateur ensembles. I’ve been contributing to a couple of horn mailing lists for several years. In that time, I’ve written reams of advice and comment, and I think it is about time I tried to put it all together. So starting from today I’m going to put together some of my better pieces on this blog so that I can more easily refer to them and so you can comment on them.

• Horn Thoughts

This looks one to keep an eye on. The posts so far have been very interesting and if Mr. West indeed has reams of information to share we can all look forward to many more informative posts to come.

The second new blog of note is from Bruce Richards, Co-Principal Horn with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra in Liège, Belgium. Titled Thoughts on Playing the Horn “Pretty” Well it is a play on words after the book by Frøydis Ree Wekre.

For nearly 18 years I have been Co-Principal Horn with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra in Belgium, and during that time I have struggled to come to grips with the job and all that it entails. My intention with the blog is to create a place for my thoughts and feelings about music and my place in it.

Mr. Richards has been blogging on an almost daily basis for the last few weeks and has covered a lot of interesting topics.

In the horn blogging world, it is a rare thing for an active orchestral player to join the conversation. Mr. Richards appears to be bitten by the blogging bug and hopefully we can all look forward to many more interesting posts.

• Thoughts on Playing the Horn “Pretty” Well