by Katy Carnaggio

There’s something about the first week of September. The crisp air somehow makes the taste of your coffee richer. A thousand scales echo down hallways of campus practice rooms, abuzz with the possibilities of a new year. And your calendar? A work of art: color-coded blocks, grand intentions, and every hour spoken for.

It feels like this is it. This is your year.

And yet by Thursday, all you’ve claimed is that old ache. The familiar sting as your best intentions slip, again, through your fingers. Maybe you missed a practice session, then another, then just stopped checking your calendar. Or maybe an old injury flared, and you have little choice but to step back. Or maybe it’s family, or work, or the unpredictable universe yanking you sideways, and the perfect plans dissolve.

You want this more than anything. So why does showing up feel impossible?

Here’s the classic advice: decide who you want to become, then let that identity be your guiding star as you build small, repeatable habits. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become,” James Clear writes in Atomic Habits. For countless musicians, it works. Small wins stack up one session at a time, and a new identity begins to take shape. Soon, you’re not just guided by your North Star, you become it.

But for some of us, keeping that guiding star in healthy view is a challenge in itself. Sometimes, it blazes like a midday sun, blinding you to everything else. Other times, it hides behind clouds of exhaustion, neurodivergence, circumstance, or grief. More often, it’s simply set aside in favor of passing lights. In those seasons, consistency is less about building habits and more about navigating an inner sky full of stars, with none gaining enough votes to guide your way forward.  

Take a typical day. You start out strong with your inner Jennifer Montone sweeping the polls. Flair, glisses, the whole campaign! By lunchtime, after discovering your third unopened bottle of cumin, alphabetizing the spice rack becomes the hill you’re willing to die on. Your inner Jen? She’s on sabbatical in Tuscany, sending postcards and absolutely not helping. By evening you’re back on the ticket, racing to finish the work you pushed off and casting last-minute votes for “responsible professional” before anyone––colleagues, students, the cat, or heaven forbid, Jen herself––starts counting the ballots.

You wanted a single star? Sorry, the universe gave you a whole galaxy. So what now? You could see those wild detours as proof you’ll never make it. Or you could start connecting the dots and building a constellation.

That’s where transfer comes in. It’s a core principle in educational psychology and skill acquisition. Simply put, transfer is what happens when something you learn, practice, or even feel in one context improves your performance in another.

It’s how the collaboration you develop working on a team, the internal rhythm you pick up looping the same song for weeks, or the calm you learn to slip on like a favorite dress before walking into a room full of strangers can all improve your playing, even if you’re nowhere near a practice room. The horn doesn’t care where you learned it, only that you did.

So if you’re still wishing you could do it the “right” way, the tidy way, the one-habit, one-path way, here’s the truth: mastery has never looked like that. Musicians already practice transfer all the time. You work on a scale or pattern in one context, and it helps you play something else later with more ease.

The same goes for everything else. Every experience, every state, every “self” has the potential to cross-pollinate and strengthen the others if you notice, name, and build on it.

That’s what it means to make your constellation explicit. It isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a strategy of radical acceptance that you are plural, that your agency is not a solo act but an interrelated performance, and your progress depends on learning the unique, beautiful geometry of your own inner night sky instead of punishing yourself for not being the North Star every day.

So when the votes don’t add up? It’s time to stop counting and start connecting.

Next month, we’ll name the types of transfer. We’ll practice how to strengthen them. We’ll learn how to trust what they hold. Part 2 is where the map begins!

by Inman Hebert

As we begin another year of university, music students prepare to learn vast amounts of music theory, history, and pedagogy. In mentally preparing for yet another busy semester, I considered how to respond to the questions naysayers ask about the value of studying music.

For music majors, we possess a passion that drives us to study, understand, and practice music in developing our skills to turn our pursuit into a career. However, skeptics often point to statistics that suggest many of us, particularly as performance majors, may never reach these goals, or at least not to the extent once thought possible.

As musicians, we all inherently recognize the philosophical and esoteric beauty of music. Even if it is difficult to verbalize, music provides us with a universal language with which to express ourselves. With an instrument, we can convey the spectrum of the human experience. (For me, the unique power of music solves any Kafkaesque existential crises inherent in proclaiming myself a music major.)

While we could endlessly discuss the philosophy behind music’s power, many critics would argue that philosophy cannot solve the real-life struggles of the performance aspects of being a music major. For our families, we need to discuss the social and emotional benefits and creative opportunities found in music; however, how can we respond to those who only speak the language of business to question the study of music? Focusing on the soft skills increasingly valued by employers allows us to communicate how music study prepares students to contribute to any work environment.

Nearly all music majors know the experience of managing a busy schedule. We often take more classes than students in other majors, all while handling ensemble, chamber music, and individual practice schedules. Our lifestyle requires a great degree of dedication, adaptability, and time management skills which prove valuable in the workplace and elsewhere. Our schedules require a strong work ethic that prepares us for the responsibilities all professionals must juggle.

To develop virtuosity in music, students must adopt a mindset of accepting and responding to constructive feedback in lessons and apply that input in our practice to facilitate growth. Playing an instrument with a variety of difficult intricacies, we must learn to constructively problem-solve the horn’s unique challenges. All this effort leads to the additional challenges of addressing, at some level, the burdens of performance anxiety. Years of honing these skills provide us with the adaptability to perform well in any professional environment.

Music also teaches us about collaboration. Even the most famous soloists in the world work with conductors and pianists. We often collaborate in both large ensembles and chamber groups. Orchestras can only be successful when all members fill their roles under the conductor’s vision. Chamber music teaches us to cooperate with our peers, often compromising to reach a musical vision. These interpersonal skills serve as the foundation for professional success.

To those who doubt the viability of our major—including even ourselves at times—learning and communicating the soft skills we acquire as music majors can silence the naysayers.

by Layne Anspach

Joseph Holbrooke’s Trio in D Minor for Horn, Violin and Piano, Op. 28 is the focus of this month’s Chamber Music Corner. Joseph Holbrook (1878-1958) was an English composer and pianist. He is often credited as a leading advocate of works of his British contemporaries. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, Holbrooke composed a wide variety of works from symphonies, ballets, and operas to solo piano works and chamber music. Holbrooke’s Wagner-like operatic trilogy, The Cauldron of Annwn, is the epitome of his interest in Welsh subjects as it is based on Welsh mythology.

The Trio in D Minor, Op. 28 (also incorrectly published as Op. 36) was written in 1902 but not premiered until July 4, 1904 in Paris. The work was dedicated to hornist Adolf Borsdorf who, with John Saunders, violin, and Holbrooke at the piano, performed the premiere. The work was originally Byronic in inspiration with the manuscript featuring a few lines of Byron’s Don Juan.

The work starts with a slow introduction, Larghetto sostenuto. Interestingly, the first movement, which is roughly in sonata form, is in compound meter rather than simple. The horn begins the work alone but is quickly followed by piano and violin. The piano brings the ensemble to a new tempo, Allegro con brio, and the primary theme, a descending motif which each instrument presents. The piano introduces the second theme with the horn and violin responding after 8 bars. This theme builds to a climax before relenting, after which the exposition is repeated. The development starts with soft piano, interrupted by a loud, boisterous horn call. The rest of the development uses mostly motifs from the first theme. A definitive statement of the primary theme, albeit slightly manipulated, may be misunderstood as the start of the recapitulation. The true recap enters unassumingly. Holbrooke tricks the attentive listener by presenting the recap’s second theme in D major. The movement ends in the major with a lively conclusion.

The second movement, Adagio non troppo, is in ternary form. There is a short piano introduction followed by a horn solo. The violin answers with its own solo, resolved with horn and violin playing together. A short second theme is introduced prior to the start of the B section. Andante, poco allegretto moves into simple triple meter and the dominant key. The return is to an abbreviated but energetic A section which calms as the movement ends.

The final movement, Molto vivace, is a happy, light-hearted rondo. The A theme is presented by the piano while violin and horn present it a few measures later. Tranquillo offers a calmer contrast. Holbrooke, as expected, alters the melodies and key areas to create excitement and drama throughout the movement which culminates in an exhilarating Vivace coda.

The reference recording is from the album Music by Three (Albany); Eric Ruske is the hornist.

Ein Waldhorn Lustig

by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hi everyone,

This month I want to highlight Liana Alexandra (1947-2011), an incredibly accomplished and prolific composer, musician, and educator from Romania. She was a huge advocate for the performance of contemporary music and for understanding composers as individuals and not lumping them together in one category. She resisted labels like “traditionalist” or “avant-garde,” preferring to compose as her piece demanded. Alexandra composed in nearly every genre, including a substantial collection of pieces for large forces like orchestra and wind ensemble, as well as a wide variety of chamber music.

Luckily for us horn players, this includes several works that feature our instrument, including her sonata for horn and piano, Intersections. Available publicly on IMSLP (as are all the pieces I will discuss here), Intersections is a workout in timbral complexities and interpretation for both players. The piece incorporates elements of both Modernism and Minimalism, using repeated rhythmic motifs interspersed with moments of calm melody or dramatic glissandi and flutter tongue to create, to my ear, a sense of conversation between three parties—two sides of the horn player and the piano. Intersections is a piece that bears repeat listening to gain full understanding as there is quite a bit of depth to Alexandra’s writing in this work.

Alexandra also composed both a wind quintet, Images Interrupted, and a brass quintet, Collages. Collages plays with timbre and texture throughout the work, using extended techniques like stopped horn, glissandi, pitch bending, and mutes to create vivid imagery that alternates between ethereal calm and frenzied activity. Images Interrupted is another exercise in extended techniques and modern sounds. The first movement opens with an unmeasured, out-of-time feel, slowly stacking and unstacking the members of the quintet and incorporating dramatic dynamic shifts. The entire work calls for a true collaboration between players as well as a holistic understanding of the score. This under-recorded work would be an excellent project for a wind quintet with “new music” experience.

Book Release—Solo

by Caroline Swinburne

Many years ago, I attended a concert of The Planets, in a large and prestigious venue, televised live to a global audience. Venus begins with a very exposed solo horn part, and I was sitting close enough to the stage to notice that the musician was visibly shaking. To my relief, the performance was, by no standards, a “disaster;” on the contrary, it was note-perfect, except that the player’s breath was trembling very slightly, resulting in the tiniest, barely perceptible, tinge of vibrato. I doubt anyone but a horn-player would have noticed. But I felt the performance was hovering on a knife-edge, and the story could have ended very differently.

The episode reminded me rather too pertinently of some of my own less-than-comfortable experiences on less-eminent stages; as every horn player will know, the instrument’s reputation as the riskiest in the orchestra is well deserved. And I started to wonder what would happen next, if things went wrong on an epic scale, for someone for whom the horn was not only their love but their livelihood.

The result was my debut novel, Solo, which tells the story of Cate, a fictional horn player with a top UK orchestra until a miscarriage causes an onstage panic attack and a famous solo goes disastrously wrong in front of a huge audience. Her contract with the orchestra isn’t renewed, and she’s too traumatised to audition for another one (especially when she discovers that that solo is on the audition repertoire list). Instead, she gives up the horn, reinvents herself online, trains as a language teacher, and travels the world trying to forget. Freed from the tyranny of the daily practice routine, and with no need to worry about the next concert, she tries but fails to persuade herself that she’s wasted all those years enslaved to a length of brass tubing.

It’s ten, arid years later before she’s drawn in to mentoring Sarah, a talented but under-educated teenage horn player with a local amateur orchestra. Like a younger version of Cate, Sarah has fallen in love with the horn and has ambitions to play professionally. But her family have no money and can’t afford a teacher or a decent instrument. Cate is her only hope if she is to achieve her dreams. When the orchestra announces that their next concert will include the work which was Cate’s undoing, Sarah’s big break is at stake. She offers Cate the chance of redemption—if she can finally face her demons.

Solo will be published by The Book Guild and available from all major retailers, both in ebook and print formats, from September 28, 2025. www.carolineswinburne.com

by Bernardo Silva

The 5th Yifeicongtian International Horn Camp took place at Dezhou, Shandong, China from July 14-19 2025. Man Yi (Central Conservatory of Music Beijing) and Gu Cong (Shanghai Conservatory of Music) were the artistic directors of this event.

Wen Yang, responsible for organizing and planning the activities, developed a comprehensive program: Expert Lectures, Daily Basic Skills Training, One-on-One Expert Masterclasses, Horn Ensemble Training and Orchestra Excerpts Analysis, Expert Recitals, and an Outstanding Student Concert.

During the week Jin Zhichen, the talented 18 year-old Chinese student, gave a fabulous recital. He has already won several prizes at international competitions including the 1st prize at the Jeju International Brass Competition in 2023 and 1st prize at the Prague Spring International Music Competition in 2024.

International experts included Xiaoming Han, Jörg Brückner, Hae-Ree Yoo, Ozan Çakar, Bernardo Silva, Ludwig Rast and Frank Demmler. These international experts, together with around 50 prominent Chinese teachers from top schools and conservatories across China, worked with nearly 300 highly motivated participants eager to develop their skills.

by Bernardo Silva

The Shenzhen International Horn Competition was held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, from July 21-28, 2025. Although a relatively recent competition, it has established itself as a premier international music competition. Hosted by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, Man Yi (Central Conservatory of Music Beijing) and Gu Cong (Shanghai Conservatory of Music) were the artistic directors of this competition.

The competition was designed with multiple categories and awards, aiming to comprehensively cover participants of different levels.

The competition was divided into two main categories (each with a number of participants):

• Professional
  a) Professional Division (All contestants under 32 years old), b) Professional Junior Division (under 17 years old) and c) Professional Horn Quartet Division
• Non-Professional (All competitors from non-professional colleges and universities)
  a) Non-Professional Group A Solo (16 to 22 years old), b) Non-Professional Group B Solo (13 to 15 years old), c) Non-Professional Group C Solo (10 to 12 years old), d) Non-Professional Group D Solo (up to 9 years old), e) Non-Professional Horn Quartet Division

The jury was composed of highly respected horn teachers and instructors from around the world.
Professional Division Judges: Jury Chair André Cazalet (FRA), Bernardo Silva (PRT), Kerry Turner (USA), Xiaoming Han (CHN), Seok Jun Lee (KOR), Jörg Brückner (DEU), and Takeshi Hidaka (JPN)

Professional Junior Division Judges: Head Judge – Chan Chou Han, Yue Guan, Jing Han, Hui He, Tao Huang, Xiang Ji, Tao Li, Yan Li, Xiaoxin Liu, Bin Lü, Zhengqi Wei, Tianxia Wu, and Dashing Zhang.

Non- Professional Group Judges: Jia Chen, Xinzhu Chen, Yuzi Cong, Lei Fu, Yue Guo, Heming Hu, Qingfeng Li, Bingchen Liu, Jin Liu, Yang Liu, Jiaqi Lü, Guo Shen, Fei Song, Shimi Song, Dajiang Wang, Zhaolin Zhang, Qi Zhao, and Ning Zhou.

Horn Quartet Division Judges: Zhongbao Guo, Yichong Huang, Te Liu, Yijun Liu, Liuyang Ma, Zhijie Miao, Jiangtao Shi, Kuo Wang, Shan Xiao, Yelin Xie, Yifan Xu, and Yanjun Zhuo.

Prize Winners:

Yewon Min

PROFESSIONAL
- Professional Division
1- Yewon Min (KOR); 2- Xinyue Zeng (CHN); 3- Jihan Zhang (CHN)
- Professional Junior Division
1- An Yuhao (CHN); 2- Siyuan Li (CHN) and Guansen Lang (CHN); 3- Xian Shi (CHN), Uiko Ikeda (JPN) and Muyan He (CHN)
- Professional Horn Quartet Division
1- Picon (CHN); 2- Carmen (CHN) and Lv De Zui Xin (CHN); 3- Hope Horn Quarter (CHN), Amygdala (CHN) and X329H Horn Quartet (CHN)

In the final round of the professional division, the three finalists performed Richard Strauss’ Concerto No. 2 with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

This eight-day international event drew over 400 talented young horn players from around the world, all competing with exceptional skill for top honors.

The Shenzhen International Horn Competition is still relatively new, but this year's record participation and the outstanding international caliber of performers highlight its growing global reputation.

by Wojciech Kamionka

Welcome to regular posts about IHS 58 in Poland! Start by visiting this excellent tourist website: http://visitkrakow.com. Following is information on travel to the Symposium site.

By plane

Most air passengers will arrive via Kraków’s John Paul II International Airport (KRK) and, if possible, this is where you want to land. The Kraków Airport is located only 20 minutes train distance from the center of the city, and trains depart every half hour.

You may find direct flights from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and New York—Newark (EWR) by Polish Airlines LOT (Star Alliance Member). If you fly from other starting points, you may check connections by well-known carriers with a stop in Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Zurich, Vienna, etc. All those airports are just a +/- 2 hour flight to Kraków, with a few flights each day. If you fly from Asia or Australia, you may also find connections in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or Istanbul.

There are also many long-distance travel possibilities with flights to Warsaw Chopin Airport by LOT (with direct flights from New York, Newark, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo, and Seoul) with a 40-minute connecting flight to Kraków, or 3 hours from Warsaw to Kraków by train.

From China to Warsaw, there is a direct flight from Beijing on Air China.

You can also check Katowice Airport located a 2-hour bus ride from Kraków.

Kraków Airport offers many destinations by regular and low fare airlines (like Ryanair, WizzAir, EasyJet), which makes travel to Kraków very easy—and this also makes it easy to plan unforgettable holidays before or after the Symposium.

From the Airport to the city

From the Kraków Airport, you may take a city train to the city center. It leaves every 30 minutes and takes about 20 minutes. The final stop should be Kraków’s Main Station (Kraków Główny). The station is in an excellent location, a mere 5-minute walk from the Old Town and just a 12-minute walk to the Academy, making it a convenient point of arrival. The station is fairly new and, as it is built into a large shopping mall, has nearly everything a traveller might need. Other nearby train stops may be Kraków Grzegórzki (also very close to the Academy and to Kazimierz Jewish City) or Kraków Zabłocie.

You may also take a taxi (Uber, Bolt, local taxi ICAR). Official Airport taxis (black ones) might be expensive. There are also city buses.

Reaching Kraków by train

Kraków Główny, the city’s main station, is served by trains from most Polish destinations as well as from the capital cities of neighboring countries. There are direct trains from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and Vilnius. Many of the longer journeys are overnight, with sleeping cars as an option.

The Polish rail network is run by a number of companies, and you should be aware that tickets are not interchangeable. Assume that a ticket is only valid for the particular journey for which you bought it. Other than that, the whole system is fairly easy to understand. Note that queues are common, so leave plenty of extra time if you’re buying a ticket at a train station. The best way is to buy tickets on the Polish Railways website: https://pkp.pl/en/ (for all train companies).

The network is comfortable and reasonably fast. It’s also cheap, depending on the type of train you choose. The 289 km journey from Warsaw to Kraków can be done in less than 2.5 hours on the faster trains, at a cost of 35€ for a second-class ticket. The slower trains take an hour longer but cost only 14€ one-way.

The fastest trains are operated by PKP InterCity and are marked on timetables as EIP (Express InterCity Premium). In summertime you need to buy these tickets in advance—up to 30 days ahead—as seat reservations are necessary. But you can buy tickets online from outside Poland; first- and second-class tickets are available, and snacks are available on these trains.

By Bus

Flixbus offers numerous connections to Kraków.

By Car

Coming to Kraków by car may be a good option. It’s 5 hours’ drive from Vienna, Bratislava or Prague, and 6 from Berlin or Dresden. The Academy is located in a restricted traffic zone, so you may use the following address as your destination: ul. Zyblikiewicza 1, Kraków.

Parking on streets in the city center is paid parking daily from Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. You may also find guarded parking lots.

Invitations

If you need an invitation for your university or institution, contact the host by e-mail ihs58info@gmail.com. Specify precisely your planned activity (Contributing Artist, Participant etc.) and whether the invitation will be only for you or for your students or both. Write accurately the name of your institution. We will do our best as soon as possible.