Just For Fun - Mnozil Brass

Mnozil Brass - The Competition

This took me back to music school years, and made me laugh. Love the variety of genres (and personalities) combined into a brilliant show of musical theatrics. Enjoy!

Oh, and how could you not love a performance which includes an Alphorn?

Leading a Double Life

Last week, I spent a few days discussing important health and patient issues with a group of inspiring patient leaders representing a wide variety of disease states and communities.  Although none of us had the same disease, we discovered that we had similarities and overlap in our experiences and philosophies.  

As we each contributed to the conversation, several of us would preface our responses with our own personal experiences or those we’ve observed in our communities.  I found myself frequently saying things such as:

• “As an MS blogger…”
• “Within the RA community, I see…” 
• “As a person living with chronic illness, I….”

On the trip home, I realize that not once did I say, “As a musician living with MS or RA, my experience is…”

Read this post in its entirety:
Arts in Health: My Dual Life as a Musician

"Ill Wind"

Sometimes there are just songs which make you laugh no matter how many times you hear them. This is one of those for me...the "Ill Wind" which is sung to the tune of the Rondo from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb Major, K. 495.  Please enjoy an original performance of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann from their second album, "At the Drop of a Hat," recorded in 1964.




(lyrics)

I once had a whim and I had to obey it,
To buy a French horn in a second-hand shop.
I polished it up and I started to play it,
In spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop.

To sound my horn,
I had to develop my embouchure.
I found my horn,
Was a bit of a devil to play.

So artfully wound,
To give you a sound,
A beautiful sound,
So rich and round.

Oh, the hours I had to spend,
Before I mastered it in the end.

But that was yesterday.
And just today,
I looked in the usual place.
There was the case,
But the horn itself was missing!

Oh where can it have gone?
Haven't you? Hasn't anyone seen my horn?
Oh where can it have gone?
What a blow, now I know,
I'm unable to play my Allegro.

Who swiped that horn?
I bet you a quid somebody did.
Knowing I found a concerto,
And wanted to play it,
Afraid of my talent in playing the horn.
But only today to my utter dismay,
It had vanished away like the dew in the morn.

I've lost that horn!
I know I was using it yesterday.
I've lost that horn, lost that horn,
Found that horn...gorn.

There's not much hope of getting it back,
Though I'd willingly pay a reward.

I know some hearty folk,
Whose party joke's pretending to hunt with the Quorn*.
Gone away! gone away!
Was it one of them who took it away?

Will you kindly return that horn?
Oh where is the devil who pinched my horn?

I shall tell the police!
I want that French horn back.

I miss its music more and more and more.
Without that horn I'm feeling lost/sad and so forelorn.

I found a concerto and wanted to play it,
Displaying my talent at playing the horn.
But early today to my utter dismay,
It had totally vanished away.

I practiced the horn and wanted to play it,
But somebody took it away!
I practiced the horn and was longing to play it,
But somebody took it away!

My neighbour's asleep in his bed,
I'll soon make him wish he were dead,
I'll take up the tuba instead - WAA WAA !

Another version of the famous "Ill Wind" performing by Boris Brott.



*The Quorn is a famous an English fox hunt.

Merry Christmas!

Horns A Plenty Christmas in DC

Joined by members of the National Symphony Orchestra Horn section.  I was teaching this evening and couldn't attend but am glad to hear a portion of their performance.

My hope is that everybody has a great Christmas and New Year's.  

Health and happiness to us all.

Horns in the Air

Spontaneous concert of duets by Jacques-Francois Gallay played
on natural horns, on a plane, in Brazil.

 Gallay and the large volume of music he composed for horn were the subject of my dissertation.  This is an example of the type of horn I play on occasion.

(h/t Bruce at Horn Matters)

Review of St. Petersburg Symphony/National Gallery Orchestra Concert

Review of our concert on Sunday. The horns get a special mention. :)



St. Petersburg Symphony, National Gallery orchestras play Mussorgsky, Prokofiev
By Joan Reinthaler, Published: October 10

Face it — the National Gallery of Art does not have a concert hall. It has the charming Gallery Courts in the West Building where most of the weekly concerts in its season are held, echoey and with difficult sightlines. For special events, it has the atrium of its East Building — visually magnificent (although its sightlines are also problematic) but acoustically impossible. Sounds reverberate there with booming insistence, muddying ensembles into an agreeable soup — with one exception — the French horn. If you are a horn player, you’ve got to be in heaven there. Horn lines emerge with a glow of burnished opulence.

Members of the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the National Gallery of Art Orchestra held forth Sunday in a program that, as far as possible, took advantage of the acoustics. Both Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide” and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” can be enjoyed purely for their color and splashes of sound and, led by Alexander Titov, the St. Petersburg conductor, the ensemble provided these in abundance.

But for the second (the “Pictures”) half of the program, I moved to the single row of seats on the second level, literally the best seats in the house, where lines could be discerned and some details heard. From there it was clear that Titov was not only whipping up big sonorities but also carving out shapely phrasing and incisive attacks.

The program’s biggest loser in the acoustics battle was the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3. During the occasional moments when Xiayin Wang was on her own, she could be heard to be a splendid Prokofiev pianist, intense, astonishingly agile and accurate. The first movement’s cascades of scales were remarkably even and powered out with an irresistible sense of momentum. Most of the time, however, she and Prokofiev’s vivid personality were submerged in a general mush dominated by percussion and low orchestral voices.

© The Washington Post Company

Cat-certo

Contemplative and cheerful composition.  Enjoy.



Soloist, Nora the Cat
Composer and Conductor, Mindaugus Piecaitis
Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra

Jazz Alphorn: Arkady Shilkloper

When I was working on my graduate degree, I attended an International Horn Workshop at which I first heard Arkady Shilkloper perform. He performed jazz horn and I ended up purchasing a signed copy of his album which I still in my collection.

Since 1998, Arkady has been performing jazz on the alphorn, not an instrument one would immediately think of as a jazz instrument. (The alphorn is the instrument used in the old "Ricola" commercials.) However the instrument, which can create pitches of the harmonic series, is unusually suited for the task.




Here is another video where Arkady is playing jazz alphorn taking advantage of multiphonics and circular breathing. Multiphonics is an extended technique whereby the performer creates two pitches by singing one note while buzzing another. A third or fourth pitch can appear with the addition of the sound waves. Basically, it's a pretty cool technique.

"Duetto buffo di due Gatti"

Performance by Les Petits chanteurs a la croix de bois in Seoul, Korea, Nov 30, 1996.


Performance by Montserrat Caballe and Montserrat Marti (mother and daughter duo), operatic sopranos from Spain.



Review and Notes on the "Cat Duet" by Rossini

"Many are the vocal recitals and opera galas that have ended with the Cat Duet as an encore. Though scored for two sopranos and piano, the work exists in orchestral versions and has been sung by male-female pairs and even as a tomcat duet. The text consists in its entirety of the single word "meow," and singers treat the melodies basically however they want to. The origins of this work are cloudy, but historians agree that it is not an authentic work by Rossini. It does, however, contain a good deal of Rossini's music, so the attribution is not completely off the mark.

The Cat Duet contains elements of 1) the aria "Ah, come mai non senti," from the second act of Rossini's opera Otello (1816), 2) a nearby duet between the characters Otello and Iago, and 3) an earlier work in the same vein, the "Cat Cavatina" of Danish opera and song composer C.E.F. Weyse. The compiler was probably Robert Lucas Pearsall, a British composer better known for his output of hymns. In 1973, the Schott publishing house issued a facsimile of an 1825 edition of the Cat Duet, published by Ewer & Johanning and credited to Pearsall, but bearing the pseudonym G. Berthold. From Rossini's day down to ours, the piece has never lost its appeal for singers, concertgoers, and cat lovers; it often appears, of course, on compilations of classical music pertaining to felines." ~ James Manheim, Rovi

If you'd like to see what the melody looks like on paper, check out this score of the Comic Duet for Two Cats.

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

My students don't much like the metronome either. LOL.



(Note: These are not my kitties. But they are cute anyways.)

Dissonance and Harmony - Working Together

Wonderful Dueling Cellos!!

I needed to see/hear something like this today.  It speaks to me on so many levels too complicated to explain.



Rather than competing, these two artists are working in beautiful harmony. Listen to this arrangement of Prelude by Dmitri Shostakovitch. So soothing.



Don't forget to vote for 'Brass and Ivory' for Best Patient Blog  -
http://www.medgadget.com/2010bestpatient.html

Inspiration Afternoon

I felt like sharing something special today, but couldn't come up with my own topic upon which to write. One reason I believe I was drawn to music (or stayed connected to music) was that often no words are required. It's hard to believe but words do not come naturally to me. Sure I can conduct a brain-dump with the best of them, or research and share information in an educational way. But today none of that was coming to me.

Fortunately, I discovered this amazing horn player featured on one of my favorite horn-related blogs, Horn Matters. Then I proceeded to spend more than an hour listening to his work on YouTube. He is arranger, musician, and film maker. I hope you enjoy a few of his videos.

Tribute to John Williams for 12 Horns by Marc Papeghin



I couldn't embed it, but I recommend you watch French Horn Tribute to John Williams - Part V.

"Previously On...." A TV Theme French Horn Medley by Marc Papeghin


These are total fun and require no words. :)

Playing with the Conductor

Conducting student before his exam: "An orchestra admires a conductor who knows his own mind and isn't afraid to speak it." Regarding professional musicians.... "What they think doesn't matter, they are merely the guinea pigs for MY interpretation."

Tune in at the 5-minute point.

Principal Horn: "I'm SO sorry, sir. Made a domino there, I'm afraid. I'm terribly sorry."

Conductor: "Disgraceful, disgraceful incompetence. Do it again."

Principal Horn: "I'm sorry sir, bit of trouble with our lip."

Conductor: "Don't give me any of your lip!"


Hattip to Bruce of Horn Matters for bringing this gem to my attention.

Brahms Intermezzo and the Recital

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Tomorrow is also the annual Spring Recital for all of my music students. I chose to hold the recital on Mother's Day many years ago for several reasons. One being that fewer activities are typically scheduled on that day; and two, it is a nice treat on a family-oriented day.

Each year I will normally play something at the end of the piano recital. Nothing big or fancy, but just a pleasant way to end the event before we move onto the reception. Yum...chocolate cake!

Since a couple of folks asked about videos of the recital (hi Cheryl and Connie), I thought that a short video of my song might be nice. I wasn't sure how the sound quality would come out but it seems to be acceptable. My hands are hurting today (darn RA) so I hope that Brahms doesn't mind too much any notes which get dropped.

So here it is. Intermezzo in A minor, Op. 76, No. 7 by Johannes Brahms.

Musical Comedy

A friend on Facebook linked to the first video on this list and I laughed hysterically when I first watched it. A combination of fond memories and current stresses are mixed together when I see this.

1) I once had a very stern horn teacher who was known for yelling at students and getting a bit gruff.

2) I am a piano teacher who is seeing the days quickly count down to the big annual recital. Those kids REALLY need to get to practicing seriously or I'm gonna have to buy a yard stick!!



And, as a piano player, I have SMALL hands. :)



Cute...



"I will survive" without the yard stick, I promise myself.



Double-OO-Wolfgang

Vienna Horns Release a New CD

A friend on Facebook linked to the following video on YouTube. This is amazing!

The sound of these horn players (and their horns) makes my heart grow about 2 sizes within my chest. I love it!!

I was not aware of this ensemble and their previous CDs, but my reaction is similar to the one I had when I first heard "The London Horn Sound" CD which came out a decade ago. Enjoy this excerpt:

Musical Laughter

Definitely one for all of us extracurricular "geeks" -


And in case you've never heard the Pachelbel Rant -


I find these absolutely hilarious. Probably due to my background as a longtime geek or just a twisted sense of humor. Either way, I recommend no drinking while watching. I don't want to hear about anybody coughing on their beverages or spitting on their computers. K?

Happy 'Blue Moon' New Year's to All!!

Mnozil Brass

Hungarian Schnapsodie:


The Alphorn:


Bohemian Rhapsody:


Mnozil Brass is a group from Austria.

Straight No Chaser - back together again!!

Two years ago I shared with you this video which went completely VIRAL!! The performers were the men's acapella group, Straight No Chaser, formed at Indiana University in 1996. View the original 1998 version of The Twelve Days of Christmas.




Straight No Chaser has since reunited and performed the following version of The Twelve Days of Christmas at Indiana University in 2008. Please enjoy!!

Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!!