Where are the Horn Artists?

The latest Woodwind & Brasswind catalog came in the mail a few days ago. It is always interesting to flip through as there are always new products I did not know of (such as the Vibrass lip massager for example). I got to looking at it and was struck by the variety of endorsing artists for instruments. Each artist below is featured with a photo and a quote or short bio. The full list from front to back is:

Trumpet

• John Hagstrom (Yamaha)
• Robert Sullivan (Yamaha)
• Bobby Shew (Yamaha)
• Wayne Bergeron (Yamaha)
• Jon Faddis (Schilke)
• Roger Ingram (Jupiter)
• Mike Vax (Getzen)

Trombone

• Jay Friedman (Bach)
• Larry Zalkind (Yamaha)

Euphonium

• Adam Frey (Yamaha)
• Steven Mead (Besson)
• Matt Tropman (Miraphone)
• Demondrae Thurman (Meinl Weston)

Tenor Horn

• Lesley Howie (Besson)

Tuba

• Howard Johnson (Meinl Weston)
• Mike Forbes (Miraphone)
• Richard Murrow (Miraphone)
• R. Winston Morris (Miraphone)
• Alan Baer (Meinl Weston)

Some pretty big name people! Other artists are mentioned in the text here and there as well. But by this point you might have noticed a trend: there are no featured horn artist endorsements. Why?

Part of it is most of the makers above don’t make horns. Or maybe endorsements don’t sell horns? Or the horn market is too small? Or major artists don’t endorse horns much? Or?

Digging deeper on horn in the WWBW catalog, the only horn player active today that is mentioned in the text of the catalog is Orlando Pandolfi, who helped develop the Hoyer G10A.

Mainly though I find it striking to see endorsing artists for every other instrument (including Lesley Howie on E-flat tenor horn) but none featured for horn.

Maybe it was something else but I suspect there must be underlying market forces at work.  Having been to a few horn events I can tell you hardly any big players use standard, mass market horns (I don’t) so part of it may be a lack of endorsing artists. Most major players use custom or low production makes that don’t have artist programs or tweaked versions of production horns that may be vintage.

The four horn lines that come to mind as having artist programs are Yamaha, Conn/Holton, Hoyer, and Jupiter. I did go by their artist pages online and at a minimum the lists in terms of horn seem dated. The Conn/Holton page is easy to navigate, with their full list of artists here and from there you select French horn on the pull-down menu. At Yamaha you have to look at all the brass together so if you start at this page you will find horn players sprinkled in here and there and you can search further. Hoyer has a similar setup (all brass together) but it is easier to navigate by clicking on photos of artists with instruments. Jupiter has a small list of artists that includes an artist also seen endorsing another brand. Looking them all over however I know there are people listed (without getting specific as to names and brands) who either are not active horn performers any longer, play versions of their instruments that are long out of production or have been tweaked substantially, or so far as I know don’t play the instrument brands listed (as in I have seen them performing other brands). I suppose you can generally endorse a product without playing it, but the marketing idea behind all of this is that you as a horn buyer can go to your favorite music store and buy a horn just like this great pro plays and sound just like them! A number of people listed don’t quite meet that standard, some brands being better than others in this category.

In any event, my goal here is not to pick a fight with anyone (I have spent thousands of dollars with WWBW over the years and have linked to their site many times plus I have owned Conn, Holton, and Yamaha horns in the past and ASU has Hoyer and Jupiter instruments–I could easily endorse any of them generally) but it is an interesting thing that in the horn world we apparently seem to not be swayed by artist endorsements and base things more on finding the best horn that suits our playing.