by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hello everyone! My name is Caiti Beth McKinney, and it is my honor to share a new resource with you all—REPresent: Repertoire for Horn by Underrepresented Composers. Focused entirely on showcasing works by historically underrepresented composers such as women and people of color, this catalogue includes solo works in addition to chamber music for brass and wind quintets, violin trios, horn ensembles, and everything in between. There are hundreds of pieces of wonderful music you may or may not have heard before, with links to composers’ websites, recordings, and places to purchase (where available).

My passion for promoting diverse musical voices began as a slow burn. In the 2017-2018 school year, I was planning my first required doctoral recital when I realized I had never performed a piece of music for solo horn composed by a woman. Instead, my undergraduate and master’s recitals had been filled with standard works (the Strauss concertos, etc.). I began researching online and stumbled upon Lin Foulk Baird’s website of Works for Horn by Female Composers, which is an incredible resource! However, I came to the realization that, at the time, there was nowhere to easily find pieces by diverse composers, so I decided to begin my own project, purely for my own reference.

I began a spreadsheet to keep track of all the pieces I was coming across, including information such as the length of the work, instrumentation, links to recordings and vendors, and any other details I thought were important. To find new (to me) compositions, I used a mix of formal and informal resources; for example, I would scroll through Spotify playlists such as “1200 Years of Woman Composers,” looking up every name and checking for...

Idyll

by Bob Rearden

National Symphony Orchestra hornist Robert Rearden has released his first solo recording, Idyll, available digitally on all streaming services as well as on CD. Rearden is joined on the album by friend and frequent collaborator Teddy Abrams, who not only accompanies Rearden but who composed a new piece for the project as well.

Rearden: In the great symphonic and operatic works of Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky, some of the most beautiful passages are written for the horn. However, the solo horn repertoire by these great masters is limited to the concerti and a few incidental pieces by Strauss in addition to the trio by Brahms. It is my hope that this compilation—featuring other works by these composers, as well as a piece by violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler, and works by two of the most important artists of our time, hornist and composer Félix Dervaux and conductor, pianist, clarinetist, and composer Teddy Abrams—will highlight welcome additions to the horn’s lyrical repertoire.

The horn parts from the works of Kreisler, Mahler, and Brahms are played from the original scores. However, Yuriy Leonovich and Nathaniel Hepler have expertly created transcriptions of the works of Strauss and Tchaikovsky, respectively.

Richard Strauss’ works explore the dramatic range and colors of the horn. The Emperor’s Monologue from Die Frau ohne Schatten features an extended solo (originally for cello) leading to a beautiful, lyrical section and a thrilling finish. Morgen! exploits the singing quality of the horn’s mid-low register. In Hab’ mir’s gelobt from Der Rosenkavalier, Leonovich brilliantly melds the vocal trio and Strauss’ heroic horn writing.

I have...

by Rev. Vichet Khuon

Hello, my name is Vichet Khuon, and I am from Cambodia. I was born in 1980 to a large and happy Buddhist family; I have three brothers and two sisters. At that time, Cambodia was still involved in the civil war with the Khmer Rouge. Soon after my birth, my mother accidently consumed poison that caused her many difficulties. She was not able to talk or even dress herself, so my father decided to take her to one of the hospitals in Thailand. He had to sell our house and most of our possessions to afford this, but we went to Thailand together in 1981. When we arrived at the border, we learned that we could not get to the intended hospital; so instead, we went to a refugee camp and found a hospital there that was eventually able to cure my mother. We lived in the camp for about ten years.

In 1991, we were finally able to return to Phnom Penh; but in 1994, my family decided to send me to live with my uncle because we did not have enough food for us all. I became his house cleaner, car washer, cook—his servant, even though I was his nephew and only a boy. At age 15, he did enroll me in a Fine Arts school. There, I met a teacher named Naomi Sharp from England. She taught me how to play horn, and her Christian faith was a positive and powerful influence on me as well.

When my uncle learned that I had become a Christian, he would not allow me to live with him anymore, so I had to move to the school. From that point, my life became more difficult; I had no food, no room, no possessions of my own, but I tried hard to learn horn. Ms. Sharp continued to teach me, but she also gave me food each day. At first, I felt like I didn’t know anything about music…what is music? why music? I thought that the sounds of guns and mines that I had...

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Por Orlando Afanador Florez

Os materiais didáticos e pedagógicos para o ensino da trompa são diversos e com diferentes abordagens, de acordo com o nível técnico para o qual foram desenvolvidos. O presente texto descreve como o livro “Prática Diária: Exercícios Técnicos para o Aprendizado da Trompa” foi concebido e aplicado como material pedagógico no ensino da Trompa dentro do programa Núcleos Estaduais de Orquestras Juvenis e Infantis da Bahia NEOJIBA, na cidade de Salvador, no Brasil, e como ele tem sido usado para definir aspectos técnicos como: desenvolvimento de som, articulação, centralização de som, flexibilidade e diferentes modelos rítmicos de escalas maiores, que permitem a unificação de critérios de ensino dentro do programa. 

Este livro define exercícios técnicos específicos para os níveis: inicial e intermediário; que podem ser articulados junto a outros métodos de reconhecidos autores para permitir o avanço técnico-instrumental dos alunos que fazem parte do programa nas diferentes orquestras e núcleos de formação.

Desde a minha chegada ao programa, venho trabalhando no desenvolvimento da escola de trompa. Um dos objetivos é que mais crianças e jovens conheçam e executem o instrumento. Por conta disto, surgiu a ideia de ter um material pedagógico que pudesse ser referência nas diferentes aulas de técnica instrumental, nos diferentes níveis do programa,...

My name is Daniel Grabois, and I am the new editor of the Pedagogy Column for Horn and More. I would like to congratulate Ab Koster on his six years of service providing this column. These are big shoes to fill!

I have been teaching horn for 33 years, in addition to performing. I am now the horn professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I began teaching in 2011 upon the retirement of Douglas Hill (more big shoes!). Before teaching at UW, I spent many years teaching at The Hartt School and at Princeton University, and I chaired the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music as well.

As a performer, I’ve been a member of the Meridian Arts Ensemble (brass quintet) since 1989. I was also an active freelancer in New York City from 1989 to 2011, playing chamber music, orchestra, ballet, opera, new music, Broadway shows, jazz, rock....

As a freelancer, every day is different: different music, different colleagues, different conductors, different situations. The common element is that you sit down and play the music that is put in front of you—and that can mean sight reading on the job.

What I have discovered in my teaching (and through my own self-study) is that we need to sight read music very differently from how we read written words (and most people can “sight read” a passage in a book without needing to explain that “I’m just sight reading here—I might make a mistake”). When we first learn to read, our...