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
