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Notes on music you might perform for an audience

Konzertstück: A Four-Minute Mile — Especially on F horn!

One of our most loved works for horn is the Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra by Robert Schumann. A staple of recent horn...

A Look at Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Romantic’

In the relative scope of Western music history, composer Howard Hanson is a bit of an unknown, a throwback to a bygone era. His...

On Playing the B-Minor Mass (on YouTube)

This past week was my week to become a YouTube star, as in addition to the Konzertstuck from the Southwest Horn Conference my performance of...

Peter and the Wolf: Catching a Horn Section by its Tail

A common factor among many working orchestral professionals is cyclical repertoire - music that comes up on a performance calendar more than once, sometimes...

Re-Writing Bach: The Trio from Brandenburg Concerto No. 1

I have been working on the final Trio section from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, not for a specific performance but rather as an exercise...

PSA: On the Ewald Quintets and that Ewald/King “Symphony for Brass”

The Ewald Quintet No. 1 for brass has to be among the most widely performed of all brass quintets in our repertoire and certainly...

Main Bersama-Sama for Horn and Gamelan

Back two years ago in my report on the 2009 Southeast Horn Workshop, hosted by Travis Bennett at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC,...

The Most Popular Horn Quartet Composer

This was originally posted as part of a report on the 2011 Mid-South Horn Workshop, hosted by Dr. Paul Stevens at the University of...

Siegfried Horn Calls from Götterdämmerung

To wrap up my series on the Siegfried horn calls within Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, today's article features the calls in Wagner's...

Horn in A in Italian ‘Bel Canto’ Opera: Rossini’s Semiramide

In "Sometimes Up is Down" I spelled out some pitfalls in performing Italian operatic repertoire. For Horn in A: The basic “A-horn” rule-of-thumb for the...