by Hannah Culbreth and Jack Bryant
(l-r) Sarah Boxmeyer, Hannah Culbreth, Jack Bryant, Etienne Kambara, Christine Ott, Martina Adams, Andrew Stump, Jennifer Montone, Jeff Lang, John Clark
After a long hiatus from live concerts due to the pandemic, we were excited to return to Verizon Hall on February 20th for our first orchestra concert for a live audience. We played a rather horn-heavy program, including Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Barber’s Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra, and Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra.
The historic Curtis Institute building at 1726 Locust closed for renovations while school was held online and just recently reopened. We now enjoy practicing in the large comfortable rooms while looking out over Rittenhouse Square and watching for people walking their dogs.
Curtis has an extensive collection of instruments available to the students for rental, either donated to the school or purchased for our studio, including alphorns, Wagner tubas, and period instruments. We especially enjoy practicing classical repertoire on the Seraphinoff natural horns and Kopprasch on a Wiener horn made by Robert Engel. The school also owns many vintage Conn 8Ds and a variety of descant horns, some of which were owned by former principal players in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Our teachers, Jen Montone and Jeff Lang, often invite well-known players to give masterclasses. Recent guests have included Fergus McWillliam, Radovan Vlatkovic, Julie Landsman, Nury Guarnaschelli, Randy Gardner, David Cooper, Richard King, and Nicole Cash.
We’re looking forward to working on the Haydn/Rosetti Double Concerto for a performance on a brass recital later this semester.
In our free time away from the horn, we enjoy walking around the city and exploring the used bookstores and thrift stores in the area. We’re always on the lookout for rare recordings on vinyl that aren’t available on streaming platforms. For one of our studio classes this semester, we gathered at Professor Montone’s house, and we each chose some interesting recordings from Julie Landsman’s personal record collection. We took turns playing along with the recordings—everything from Dennis Brain’s recording of the Britten Serenade with Peter Pears to Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess with the Cleveland Orchestra and Pierre Boulez.
We also enjoy visiting interesting stores in Center City to find fresh ingredients to make food for our friends. DiBruno Bros., Reading Terminal Market, and the Rittenhouse Square Farmer’s Market are some of our favorite places to purchase groceries. Jack is a coffee geek and likes to roast his own coffee and prepare espresso drinks with his manual-lever espresso maker, so we keep him “in supply.”
We sometimes take trips on Amtrak to New York City to see performances. Last November, we went to see the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. But Philadelphia is an equally great city with a vibrant and engaging arts and culture scene and lots to see and discover.
