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Fifty Years of the American Brass Quintet

PUBLISHED: September 4, 2010, John Ericson

The American Brass Quintet gave their first public performance on December 11, 1960 in New York City. This year, 2010, they will celebrate with a special 50th Anniversary Concert on Friday, October 15 in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. I still remember the first performance I heard by the ABQ; it was in Wichita, [...]

A Summer to Remember—1983; An Interview with Bruce Richards

PUBLISHED: September 2, 2010, John Ericson

Bruce Richards recently wrote in his site Living the Dream of “Four Summers That Changed My Life.” I was particularly interested to read this as I was there for one of them! That summer was 1983 and we were both students of David Wakefield at the Aspen Music Festival. The previous summer I had also [...]

“Improvement, not Perfection”

PUBLISHED: December 4, 2009, John Ericson

Another article from the original HTML Horn Notes Blog dated 2/7/05. In my entry for 1/20/05 Three times or a thousand times? I address a presentation I recently heard that seriously pushed the concept of attempting to play things correctly 1000 times in a row. At the time I felt that this was, in short, [...]

The Warm-Down and Embouchure Health

PUBLISHED: April 22, 2009, John Ericson

Following up on my post from yesterday, there are a number of things that combined will help keep your embouchure healthy. One thing I learned to do was warm-down. The summer I learned to do this was the summer I was in the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra, now known as the National Repertory Orchestra. I was [...]

A Key Thing to Practice

PUBLISHED: October 9, 2008, John Ericson

One of the most important things you will ever practice are long tones with a perfect crescendo and diminuendo. For example six counts up and six counts down, with perfect intonation and no lumps, each side of the peak a mirror image. The reason this is so critical is you have no hope of playing really [...]

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Caruso Studies and the Horn

PUBLISHED: June 23, 2008, John Ericson

I have long been fascinated by the legendary brass teaching of Carmine Caruso (1904-1987). He was a saxophone player but earned a reputation as a builder and re-builder of embouchures, working with many brass players over his long career. The best known of his publications is Musical Calisthenics for Brass. This publication itself is somewhat [...]

Striving for Tone

PUBLISHED: June 22, 2008, John Ericson

Another post from the archive, this dates to 7/2/2004 and is a favorite of mine. As I type these words I am at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina for my fifth summer, teaching half of the 16 student horn studio (9 college students and 7 advanced high school students–there are two divisions of [...]

John Ericson & Bruce Hembd
on the French horn, brass related topics, and the field of classical music.