by Katy Woolley

I want to talk to you about practise. Maybe I’m a bit behind the curve here, but I only recently really realised the extent to which our private work is linked to the eventual outcome on stage. Am I unfocused in my practise? Then my performance will likely be distracted too. Do I beat myself up during my sessions? Then I will probably be suffering from detrimental negativity in the concert as well. Do I try random things over and over and hope that they work? Then the performance may well suffer from that hit-and-miss character, too. Now of course there is no one right way to practise—we are a wonderful collection of various learning styles, preferences, tendencies, etc. Imagination, therefore, ought to be the shining light at the centre of each player’s creative world.

Imagination: “The act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.”

One of the fundamental points of practise is to improve. By necessity, we must continually be searching a multitude of newness and traversing what can be a scary voyage of change. We must be comfortable exploring actions/sounds/feelings/processes that have never before been wholly perceived in our realities. We must, therefore, also be understanding and respectful of a whole host of outcomes we are bound to experience, both desirable and, sometimes, not so desirable.

Many of my current students and friends know about my love of the following trilogy: Thought—Action—Result. I have noticed that my frustrating, less-effective practise sessions are when I become overly focussed on the result. At the end of the day, Result is what we want: a great entry, smooth lines, a ringing sound. But this is the one part of the trio that isn't directly under our control. Thought is trainable, controllable, adaptable. The resulting Action (and the link between the two) is also trainable, controllable, programmable. Result is wonderfully enlightening and educational, but it is purely a consequence of the first two.

So for this short article, let’s peek more at that first stage: Thought. This is interchangeable with Imagination. Let’s take a brief look at some definitions of Thought: “An opinion or belief in the mind,” or “The intellectual product or the organised views…of a period, place, group, or individual.” Now this is splendid if your views and beliefs are helpful and conducive to excellence, but in my experience, many deep-rooted opinions can be the opposite: I’m too young, too old, too small; my low/high register isn't good enough, my fingers are too slow, I’m not strong enough, etc. Yet my experience shows me that every one of us is capable of doing one single thing that we thought we couldn’t, and one small change can lead to more and then become cumulative in their growth potential. It is my firm conviction that anyone can develop past their present beliefs. That is what excites me to practise—to use my imagination beyond any limiting assumptions that I’ve held—and you can do the same.

So how can imagination be applied to practise? Here are a couple of my favourite examples, both of which I begin without my horn in my hands. First is the “What If” game. “What if I were someone who could…” …play this with a great, wide, audience-rattling sound, with a beautiful subtle entry, with the smoothest connection. What would that feel like? look like? sound like? What breath would facilitate that? How would the air flow in and out of my body? Where is the power source? I imagine an answer to one of those and turn it into an action which can be practised away from the instrument. Once I truly and deeply have the thought and action flowing nicely, it’s time to see what the result is! Second, I try and imagine the shape of any particular note or phrase, as if it were alive in the room. How can I allow that note or line to ring in the room? What texture, colour, depth, personality, weight, way-of-moving does it have? How can I create that note and set it free? These examples allow for freedom of thought to experiment outside the prejudices we hold against our own playing. We then use these to adapt our actions, movements, and techniques, and we observe the result as a tool to further direct our exploration.

But these are just a couple of my processes! You will have many ways of finding your own exciting boundary-defying intentions. The entire scope of possibility is available to us all once we climb into the infinity of the imagination.

Born in Devon, England, in 1989, Katy Woolley is a passionate and dedicated teacher. At the age of twenty-two, Katy was appointed Principal Horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and this led to solo performances of works by Mozart, Strauss, and Britten, as well as the premiere of Tansy Davies’ Forest Concerto for four horns with the Philharmonia and New York Philharmonic Orchestras. Katy was appointed Solo Horn of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2019, and she is widely regarded as one of the most exciting horn players of her generation.

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by Gabriella Ibarra

Venezuela: During 2021, the Latin American horn community began developing several projects, and one of them has done a remarkable job of making it possible to connect the Venezuelan horn players who emigrated due to the current difficult circumstances in Venezuela. Most of these musicians were trained within the recognized El Sistema of Venezuela, an institution where the orchestra immediately becomes part of the day-to-day life of each of the children who are growing up within this huge “musical family.” The need to play together again was the main reason for the group Venezuelan Horns' emergence in 2019. After several remote recordings, Venezuelan Horns took the additional step of offering “Cornada 2021,” a virtual festival that provided a great opportunity for many children and young people to participate in masterclasses given by teachers like Joel Arias, José José Giménez, Hugo Valverde, Will Sanders, Jean Philippe Chavey, and David Cooper. The organization in charge of the young people included Ángel Eduardo Mendoza, David Mendoza, Javier Mijares, and Nelson Yovera, with additional support from the Venezuelan horn teachers and players Luis Fernando Ruiz, Javier Aragón, Luis Valladares, Liber Oscher, Alberto Arias, and Juan Sebastian Gimenez. Every teacher offered his knowledge and careful guidance to the students selected to play. The premise of ​​the festival was to make it accessible but also free of charge to all participants, and thanks to the coordination of teacher Joel Arias as IHS Representative for Venezuela, this event became a reality. The National School of Horns Venezuela and El Sistema were also present at “Cornada 2021,” which is already planning now to offer the course again in 2022.

Argentina: Professor Michael Jimenez prepared his Horn and Trombone Chairs at the Higher School of Music in the province of Salta and presented a recital involving all his students, with arrangements adapted by himself, on November 24.

Colombia: The horn section of the Bogotá Symphony Orchestra, Dante Yenque, Diego Parra, Oscar Alvarez, and Daniel Bello, have planned a concert of Christmas music for December 12 at 2:00 p.m.

by Kami Harcrow

When I was eleven years old and about to enter sixth grade, the middle school band director came to visit my school. His job was to help students select an appropriate instrument for band class. I wanted to play the French horn, but my older brother was already playing horn and was first chair in the eighth grade band. Our parents would not allow me to play the horn because they didn’t want us competing against one another, so they said I had to choose a different instrument. My mother had a flute from her high school days and urged me to play that, but I did not want an instrument with so many keys. After a lot of back-and-forth discussion, my brother, in his eighth grade wisdom, suggested I play the bassoon because “you’ll always be first chair and never have to practice!” So, despite my flute trepidation, I took up an instrument with significantly more keys that was also much heavier to tote around. I often was first chair, but I did have to practice. I played bassoon through high school and for a year in college but quit after that. Since they were so expensive, I never had my own instrument, and did not play again for many years.

As I approached fifty, I prepared to retire from my career as an air traffic controller and searched for activities to occupy my time. I decided to take up playing bassoon once again. Craigslist offered up a nice, lightly-used Fox Renard bassoon which I purchased without playing (being too embarrassed to try it in front of its owner). I bought some reeds and a Weissenborn method book and started playing again. Fortunately, it came back more quickly than I expected, even after 30 or so years. I joined a community band—which was thrilled to have a bassoon player, and they did not require auditions.

Several years after retiring, I moved to a different city and joined a different band where I was once again the only bassoonist. As a small band, it had only a few of each instrument and no horns at all. Frequently, the conductor bemoaned the lack of horns and tried to cajole local horn players to join us. The band also played marching music, which usually has no bassoon part, so I pondered picking up a different instrument for those occasions. I toyed briefly with the trombone, but one day it occurred to me that I could buy a horn and learn to play. Again I perused the ads, this time on the International Horn Society classifieds, and after a little consultation with my brother (who by that time was a horn professor), I decided on a used Holton H179.

When the horn arrived, I found a teacher at a local music shop and began taking lessons at the age of fifty-six. I worked my way through Getchell’s First Book of Practical Studies for French Horn and, at the suggestion of a fellow student, joined a second local community band that didn’t require auditions. There, I joined several other horn newbies and was seventh horn. After a month or so in this band, I casually mentioned to the conductor in my first band that I was learning horn. She was very excited and encouraging, and before I knew it, I was playing horn in two bands. Meanwhile, in my lessons, I had moved on to a Kopprasch Studies book.

Playing music for two bands and keeping up with my lessons, I practiced at least two hours every day. My thumb developed a large lump where it joined my hand. To ease this, I purchased the hand strap my brother recommended. In February 2020, I played my first concert on horn. A newly-joined bassoonist had a family emergency, and this resulted in me playing both bassoon and horn for the concert. After the performance, as I helped to clean up, I lifted a table and realized that I could not lift my left arm higher than eye level. Just days later, the entire state—and therefore both bands—shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With no band and no horn lessons, I stopped practicing as I realized that the position of the horn was either causing or exacerbating the pain in my shoulder. Three doctor visits resulted in a diagnosis of frozen shoulder. They gave me two very large shots of steroids in the joint, and I began visiting a physical therapist. I stopped playing both horn and bassoon, hunkered down to do PT, and waited for things to reopen.

A year and a half later I had not played either instrument at all.

Then, my original band began to have rehearsals outside in a courtyard and I decided to play the bassoon, thinking it would not hurt my shoulder. As I practiced, I often played the band music along to YouTube videos to make it less boring. Hearing the horn parts in the songs made me melancholy for playing horn again, but I was nervous about losing the shoulder flexibility I had worked so hard to regain. As rehearsals continued, I decided I would try the horn again. I picked one song—ironically, a medley of tunes from the movie Frozen—and I asked the conductor if I could try to play the horn part on it. She happily agreed, and I began to practice the part, always followed up with my forty minute PT routine. By concert time, I had three horn parts and ten bassoon parts to play.

Now I am back to practicing mostly horn. I set a thirty-minute timer to ensure I do not practice too long, and I do my PT afterwards. Playing the horn brings me more joy than does the bassoon (even if I sound like a distressed cow sometimes). Being in small bands means that often I am the only person playing horn. It is not as easy to hide in the texture; but being older, I do not care nearly as much if my occasional wrong notes are heard. For me, it is all about the fun of being in band and making music with others, no matter how old I am.