Random Monday: Under Siege, Buried in Snow and Taking a Taxi

A week from today I will present a session at the 2012 Southwest Horn Conference with the title “Horn Secrets: Putting Conventional Wisdom to the Test.” The following was turned in for the program book: Many elements of a conventional approach to horn playing were put forth by Philip Farkas in his 1956 text The [...]

Over the holidays relatives descended in droves upon my homestead, and so to get out of the house we decided to go to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in north Phoenix for a day-trip. This was my first visit to this museum. Back in May 2010, John wrote about his first visit and he has also given a few [...]

Recycled horns In the BBC documentary Scrapheap Orchestra, the horns are all made of recycled materials. A couple, who run an instrument repair shop, are set to feature in a show that challenges the country’s finest instrument makers to create an orchestra out of recycled materials. Woodhead Horn Repair Ltd, is set to appear on BBC4’s [...]

Depending on the state you are in, regional honor band auditions at the high school level may have either recently happened or are coming very soon. Besides music that you are required to prepare you will be asked to play scales, and it should at the audition never sound like a surprise. “F# major! AAAK!” [...]

To conclude this series on double and triple tonguing, we turn to William R. Brophy, who suggests in his Technical Studies for Solving Special Problems on the Horn to focus on cutting off the ends of the syllables with the tongue as an aid to double tonguing. The first step is to focus on the [...]

‘Tis the season At Bennett’s Tenets, we see an example of how busy this season can get for musicians. Musicians in black A point I never thought about – audiences at symphony concerts can sometimes be seeing the orchestra at “shoe level.” But can an orchestra musician still be stylish within the constraints of a [...]