New Hampshire: Saturday 7 December (Plaistow, NH)
Boston: Sunday 8 December (Boston University)

Come play in New England's ONLY mass horn choir events this Christmas season. Join us in New Hampshire on Dec 7 or in Boston on Dec 8....or both! All ages and abilities are welcome. No competition, no stress, just a day of fun horn choir, all ages playing all together. Ugly / festive sweaters & decorate your horn, prizes will be awarded! To participate in the White Elephant gift exchange: $5 buy in or donate a baked good.

Please register for either (or both!) dates here: https://forms.gle/hYhX7KPxAg2JDfXp6
These are FREE to participate, and the concert is free and open to the public. 
This year we are endorsed by the International Horn Society and will be sponsored by Pope Instrument Repair

by Ellen Dinwiddie Smith

Like many of the young musicians of my generation, I was inspired by the Cleveland Orchestra recordings conducted by George Szell. Soon I began hearing the name Myron Bloom and words like "legendary" being used in connection with those recordings. At that point in my life, I had not heard many orchestras 'live', but in 1982, I did have the opportunity to hear L'Orchestre de Paris when they played in Austin, Texas. Luckily, Myron Bloom was playing first horn on that evening's performance of Brahms Symphony #3. The beauty of his sound, the inevitability of his phrasing and the sheer musicality that his playing embodied drew me in and I immediately made it my goal to study with him. Thankfully, Myron accepted me as a student and became my teacher and mentor first at the Juilliard School and then at the Curtis Institute of Music. Perhaps because my father was a West Point graduate and Lieutenant Colonel, Myron's no-nonsense communication style worked for me. Many of his 'barked' commands remain seared into my memory: "Prepare the sound! Play the phrase! Connect the notes! Rhythm!" He often made short exclamations and expected one to immediately follow them. He was demanding but always with the goal of making great music. It should not go unmentioned that I was not treated differently because I was a female horn player. There were several young women in the studio, and his teaching style did not change. He was incredibly respectful of his female students but did not pull any punches. Being true to the music was the most important thing. 

Myron taught me that I was indeed a musician (not just a horn player!) and opened my ears to intensive listening. If it didn't sound good it couldn't be right! He set the bar high. We talked about musicians he admired and recordings that he loved. One summer at the Waterloo Festival in New Jersey, I was privileged to play alongside him. His rhythm astounded me - he was a rhythm machine! As my time as a student came to an end, I kept in touch with Myron (and got to start calling him that, or Mike, instead of Mr. Bloom). I enjoyed getting to know his wife Susan and visited several times over the years. We spoke about articles in the New York Times, David Brooks columns, the death penalty, the nature of true genius - things we hadn't covered in lessons. I continued learning as I watched him live with dignity and integrity. His dear wife Susan Moses kept in touch whenever something new was going on with his health, and for that I'm thankful. Myron Bloom was loved for his heavenly sound, and it is my hope is that he found the perfect horn in heaven. He deserves nothing less. 

by Philip Myers

I had the opportunity to study with Mr. Bloom at the Blossom Music School during the summer sessions of 1970 & 1971. It changed my life. Up until that time I was consumed with the difficulties I was having on the horn. He helped me learn to think and listen to music without filtering it through the technical issues of the horn. This I had never done.

If I could attribute the main thought I got from him, it was the inexorable march forward of a phrase. This idea that most of the time music is moving forward, not falling away, has so many ramifications that present themselves to the curious that I have spent the last fifty years trying to realize them.

At the time I studied with him he had an absolutely unique teaching style. In my mind it could be described as “defender of music and the phrase”. When I played for him I felt like he was literally protecting the purity of his ideas from what I was doing. And he should have been as I had no idea what I was doing. 

Not to be sacrilegious, but to me “he spoke as one having authority”. I had no doubt from the moment he began to teach me that he knew something connected to a greater knowledge that I wanted desperately to know - and he did share it.

He knew precisely what he liked and what he did not, but I always felt he was a very realistic and humble man, and with me as a student, very open. I heard him play about 40 live concerts and have every recording of his that I can find. To this day, if I think about a piece that he recorded or that I heard him play live, in my head I hear him playing it, his idea, not my own.

By Bruce Richards

Nearly 15 years ago, I came across an album by the Southern Cross Soloists from Australia. (Peter Luff, horn)  The album, Song for the Shadowland, featured music by Paul Stanhope. The title piece is a four movement work for soprano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano. This includes four settings of aboriginal poems by Oodgeroo Noonuccal.  The first, second and fourth movements are sung, but the third is a solo for horn entitled Interlude.  This solo horn piece was so successful that Paul Stanhope published it separately under the title Dawn Interlude.

Here is an excerpt of the description that Stanhope gives to the solo: 

“This piece is in some ways a commentary on Oodgeroo's poem Dawn Wail for the Dead but also, in its own way, a personal gesture of sorrow for past wrongs perpetrated against Indigenous Australians.” 

A video interview with Australian composer Paul Stanhope by Bruce Richards (with French subtitles):

Used with kind permission by the Liège Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Belgium