What’s funny is that I picked out that Laskey on a whim. I wanted to try one, so I pulled up a mouthpiece comparison chart and picked out something that seemed comparable to mouthpieces I’ve liked in the past.

I didn’t have the same experience with this model when I tried it right after getting it. It’s neat to go back to something that maybe didn’t work as you’d hoped and then have a completely different experience with it.

I noticed a significant improvement in how the horn played. The valves no longer clack loudly (almost embarrassingly so!). My slurs are more buttery smooth, and my notes lock in better. My loud playing is more controlled and resonant. Overall, it just sounds great! A lot of that may be the horn, but a good portion of that may be because I play my “new” horn with more confidence and enthusiasm.

Conn inscription (Before)

Conn inscription (After)

Valves (Before)

Valves (After)

Horn (Before)

Horn (After)

If only we all could look this fabulous at 60.

I’m keeping busy with my regular orchestra and subbing with other orchestras as needed. My brass quintet is taking a little hiatus this summer. We need to find another tuba player (anyone interested? ).

I attended the Southeast Horn Workshop in Hattiesburg, MS, where I visited with friends and colleagues, heard some fine horn playing, and picked up some new music. Oh, and I took this photo of my horn:

Unfortunately, this is the only one I’ve posted since I had major work done on it (I hope to move the task of writing up a more comprehensive before and after post up farther in my ever-growing to-do list very soon). If you are interested in seeing (sort of) what my horn looked like before, check out this post.

While at the workshop, I picked up John Clark’s Exercises For Jazz French Horn and Joseph Singer’s Embouchure Builder for Horn. I’ll be using the latter this summer to get in shape for all of the summer playing I plan to be doing. I hope my new neighbors like horn.

I’m not really a New Year’s resolution type of gal, but I’m thinking that making a regular practice part of my day would be a good one. It’s like any other kind of exercise. If you do it, you feel great! If you don’t, you feel bleh.

Here’s a rundown of what has happened since my last posting:

International Horn Symposium 2009

I attended this year’s symposium at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. I performed with the University of Louisiana – Lafayette horn studio, bought a ton of music, and enjoyed visiting with horn-playing friends.

Northwest Mahler Festival 2009

I participated in all of this year’s NWMF reading sessions, including a stint as a soprano in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. We also read a bunch of movie scores, Copland’s Dance Symphony and Suite from The Red Pony, Janáček’s Sinfonietta, and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9. I also performed with the Festival Orchestra, playing one of the Wagner Tuba parts on Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung and Fourth Horn on Mahler’s Symphony No. 6.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra

I have attended a couple of concerts, including:

• July 11, 2009 – Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY
• October 4, 2009 – Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto & Mahler’s Fifth Symphony

I’ve renewed my subscription for this season, so I’m looking forward to some great performances in 2010.

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival

I heard Brahms’ Trio for horn, violin and piano in E-Flat major performed by Jeffrey Fair, horn; Stefan Jackiw, violin; and Jeremy Denk, piano.

Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program Recording Session

I helped record film music composed by student composers in the Pacific NW Film Scoring Program. It was a neat experience and my first time playing along with a click track.

Sammamish Brass Quintet

My quintet performed the national anthem at two Seattle Mariners baseball games. I enjoy attending Mariners games anyway, so this was especially cool!

Julius Watkins Jazz Horn Festival

The festival celebrated jazz horn and the life of Julius Watkins (1921-1977), who pioneered the art of jazz improvisation on the French horn. The day included talks and workshops about Watkins and jazz improvisation and an evening concert that featured renowned jazz hornists from all over the world.

Seattle Opera

I attended the final performance of Seattle Opera’s production of La Traviata. I also purchased a subscription to the opera this year. I’ll also see Il Trovatore and Falstaff.

Okay… I guess you can see that work isn’t the only thing keeping me busy.

The folks at Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works did what they deemed a “minor” overhaul. It makes me wonder what a major one would entail! In a nutshell, they rebuilt the valves, straightened out and removed dents from the bell, removed dents from the rest of the horn, replaced worn out parts, and applied a nice brushed finish to the body of the horn for aesthetic purposes (to hide some of the imperfections in the metal). I’ve only had it back for almost a couple of weeks, but I’ve noticed that my pitches are much more centered and my slurs are buttery smooth.

It’s funny how you don’t really notice minor problems with your equipment. You get used to how it works. Previously, I struggled with pitch centering and thought it was me. This led me to become more conscious (and self-conscious) of it, so I bet that makes the improvement after the overhaul even more noticable to me.

It’s like how after cleaning the chain on your bicycle, pedaling becomes so much easier, because you no longer have stuff gunking it up. The buildup is so gradual that you become accustomed to it without really knowing it.

Now that I’ve eliminated the gunk, I can focus on making other improvements to my horn playing.

I’ve been keeping busy with orchestra and quintet rehearsals, and I’ve played two orchestra concerts and an Easter gig with my quintet. The concert in March featured Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and the May concert featured the winners of the youth concerto competition. I have also been playing first part more frequently on these last two concerts: in March on Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute and in May on Lalo’s Overture to Le Roi D’ys and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in E Major.

In general, I haven’t considered myself either a high horn player or a low horn player. I have tended to play whatever is needed and have sought to develop both ends of my range. This seems to work out fairly well for my playing needs. It also helps to participate in chamber groups (my brass quintet, for example). We hornists are lucky in that we can play in brass and woodwind quintets, and for me, each group requires a slightly different approach to playing.

No matter where I’m playing, whether it’s by myself, in a small group, or in a large one, the things that lead to my best playing are when I subdivide, hear the notes in my head before I play them, and provide lots and lots of breath support. Oh, and a thorough warm up helps immensely too. I’ve been struggling with intonation with my loaner horn, though it’s been getting better.

I’m excited and interested to see how my intonation issues will change when I get my horn back. I can’t wait until that happens. Can you tell that I’m super excited?

For now, I’m borrowing a colleague’s M-series Elkhart 8D. It’s a lovely horn and has a very nice tone to it. The only challenge to it is that it seems like I play even more sharp on it than I’d been playing on my 8D.

This intonation problem baffles me, because all through college, I tended to play flat. I was on a different horn back then, a Holton, so that may have a lot to do with it. Plus, I played on a big mouthpiece: a Schilke 31B.

I’ve been to a few concerts since my last post, but I’ll save those for another day. It’s getting late here, and I have an early morning appointment.

I’m also torn as to what to do about my horn. The repair shop here that properly fixed my tuning slide when it came unsoldered (as I was warming up for a concert!) recommended that I budget two grand for an overhaul. I don’t know if that figure is just to be on the safe side or if I could get as good an overhaul from another place for much less. Right now, my horn plays fine, but it’s how it’s always played for me so I don’t really have anything to compare it to.

I didn’t write about my last concert, because I didn’t really care much for the music. The next concert features Scheherazade, so that’ll give me something interesting and challenging to work on. I’m also keeping busy with my brass quintet.

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra

I’ve also been to a couple of concerts since my last post, including a really spectacular performance by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, at Benaroya Hall. Their program included: Tilson Thomas: Street Song for Symphonic Brass, Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5 (Garrick Ohlsson, piano), and Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5.

Regarding the horn solo in the Tchaikovsky… I admit I tend to be a bit of a Cerminaro fangirl… but well, SFSO principal hornist Robert Ward’s performance was pretty much perfect.

In my last holiday pops concert, I found myself playing a variety of parts, going from first part on a piece to 4th with lots of bass clef on the next. I made an exception with the low parts and used my Schilke 31B instead of my Stork CW8… or so that’s what I thought I was using.

For Christmas, I received a Laskey 70G. Laskey mouthpieces seem to be highly regarded by the locals here, so I figured I’d try one out. Well, I dragged out my small mouthpiece collection and compared the Laskey with the others and discovered that the mouthpiece I was using for the holiday piece with all the low notes was actually a Schilke 29, which has a shallower cup and is more suitable for high horn playing. I was convinced it was the 31B, so in my case, the belief that switching mouthpieces would aid my low horn playing was a bit of a placebo effect. I’m sure that there were probably other factors or differences between the Stork and the Schilke 29 that aided my playing though.

I haven’t used my Laskey in a full-blown rehearsal just yet, but my first impressions of it are positive. The rim is more rounded and feels more comfortable on my lips, and my sound seems brighter. It also didn’t seem to affect my range (high or low). I’m looking forward to seeing how it works for my next concert and will report my findings here!