John Ericson, 05/11/2008
Echo Horn and the Villanelle
The second of two posts on performing Dukas Villanelle, posted on 10/7/05 in the original Horn Notes Blog A couple posts ago I wrote about the Villanelle and the natural horn request found in the International/Chambers edition of this work. Another spot that has an element of “controversy” about it is the echo horn effect [...]
Dukas Villanelle and the Natural Horn
The first of two posts on performing Dukas Villanelle, posted on 9/18/05 in the original Horn Notes Blog Villanelle by Paul Dukas is certainly among the top 20 solo works for horn. I frequently work with students on this work, and recently I heard a number of students perform the Villanelle at the International Horn [...]

Podcast on The Brass Gym

The episode of The MelloCast for this week, episode 46, focuses on The Brass Gym for horn, a comprehensive book and CD for warm-up and technical development. I worked with authors and tuba vurtuosi Sam Pilafian and Patrick Sheridan to “translate” the original version which was for tuba/euphonium for the horn. I describe in the podcast [...]

Silver and Gold: A Full Circle to HornPlanet.com
Planets and horns. When I was a graduate music student at Arizona State University back around 1995, I became fascinated with this new thing called the “World Wide Web.” The concept of any Joe Schmoe like me publishing information online for the whole world to see blew my frickin’ mind. It still does. Back then, [...]

Guadalupe, a New Concert Opera by James DeMars

When I was contacted about playing in the orchestra for Guadalupe, a new concert opera by ASU colleague James DeMars, I was immediately interested as he mentioned that the performing ensemble would also include several leading Native American artists including in particular R. Carlos Nakai. My first year at ASU I was contacted to play [...]

Assignment: Listen to Horn Music
The grades are all done and in now on another semester of horn at ASU. One of the courses this semester was a horn repertoire class, and one part of their written final was a short listening exam. The repertoire for this listening exam was based on the top section of my list of Horn [...]

The “N” Words: Negativity – Part II
In the first part of this series, I identified a common occurrence in the classical music profession, namely, musicians with negative attitudes. As some professionals progress in their careers, they become jaded with skepticism, cynicism and apathy. While levels can vary, the end effect is more or less the same. Like a stone dropped in [...]





