Sessions with Saxton and Sellers at the 1989 SWRHW

Last week, I posted a picture on Facebook sent to me from Tina Barkan. It was a snapshot of a humorous T-shirt from the Barry Tuckwell Institute. Of course this T-shirt is presumed to be just a good-humored joke. On Facebook it elicited some interesting reactions. Every instrument has a didactic method book like the [...]

One of the guest artists at the 1989 Southwest Regional Horn Workshop was Philip Farkas. Among the materials I inherited from then ASU Professor of Horn Ralph Lockwood were five VHS tapes of sessions at that workshop, which I am now converting to DVD format so that they can be accessed easily by the current [...]

Reflections on the week that has passed. Artificial Lip Mouthpiece From Will Kimball’s blog comes this oddity. “No embouchure required!” claims the advertisement. It appears to incorporate some kind of artificial, rubber lip that somehow is supposed to do the buzzing. Like Lauren Bacall once said to Humphrey Bogart, “just pucker your lips and blow” [...]

Last night I had the chance to attend the final dress rehearsal in Tempe of The Academy drum corps, which was open to the public. My son and I had great time; they have a great show and a great sound. I was especially happy with the mellophone section sound; it was among the best [...]

One thread between several of the recent posts is that in various ways the quotes point to spoken or unspoken “rules” of horn playing that maybe we need to break to actually sound our best. Thinking about pressure especially, I can’t think of any student I have ever had that I honestly thought used too [...]

While it is believable that inherent narcissism may be inflamed by social networking, it is difficult to believe that something as fundamental as a void in empathy can be fostered or born from something so fleeting and trivial as online social networking. Narcissism is an inherent character flaw. And it is something formed in early [...]