Ein Hand-enleben I – Getting the Conductor “Hand”

Compare and contrast. I have a love/hate relationship with the composer John Cage. I love his writings and I love the heady philosophical concepts behind his compositions, but I am otherwise completely indifferent to his music. This opinion does not come from a perspective of complete ignorance, mind you. As an undergraduate, I studied composition [...]

Performance suggestions. I had the pleasure of performing this piece – Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte – over the weekend and while it is fresh in my mind, I thought it appropriate to blog on this lovely excerpt. Many times the manner in which an orchestral solo is performed in context differs greatly from [...]

First, a big note of thanks to Travis Bennett and his students and colleagues at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC for hosting a great Southeast Horn Workshop this past weekend. This is the largest of the annual regional horn workshops, and this year had over 300 registered participants. Every horn event has many notable things, [...]

Things read over the weekend. From Julia Rose’s story about her crushed lead pipe, a link to a YouTube video of what I can can only guess is a drunk hornist who drops his horn in concert. In spite of this, the show goes on! Along these lines, a recent story in The Guardian (UK) [...]

Some thoughts on a recent post. A recent post – Embouchure and Airstream – features YouTube slow-motion videos of trombone embouchures in action. These videos have jogged old memories from lessons past and they have called into question my thinking about embouchure aperture. In the Art of French Horn Playing, author Philip Farkas writes about [...]

A major project for me over roughly the past six months has been a rethinking of how the embouchure works. Thus, I would offer a major hat tip to Bruce Hembd of the Horndog Blog, he just posted a great video link that clarifies some elements of how the embouchure really works. The video from [...]