Breathing Life into a World Premiere
by Ann Ellsworth
Premiering Sheila Silver's “Being in LIfe,” for Horn, Alpenhorn, Tibetan Singing Bowls and String Orchestra
Sheila Silver’s new piece, “Being in Life,” for Horn, Alpenhorn, Tibetan Singing Bowls and String Orchestra, was premiered in Seattle by the Philharmonia Northwest, Julia Tai conducting. I have never premiered a piece of this scale and magnitude or worked in such close collaboration with a composer. Sheila is an amazing creative force - watching her process different textures and phrases within her rhythmic sound world gave me a glimpse into her deeper relationship with music and sound. I was also fascinated to see firsthand how Sheila, as a composer, took this idea of a piece and grew it into a premiere. The love and commitment she gave to this piece had the same energy with which she gardens, teaches and cares for those around her. Her passion for life and music is inspiring and life-changing. I had met Sheila very briefly as a colleague when, as a junior faculty in crisis, I reached out to her for advice. Sheila reached back as a mentor and friend, played music with me, encouraged me, listened to me and talked with me about Being in Life.
Sheila’s partner, John Feldman, is a filmmaker and needed a soundtrack for his film about biologist Lynn Margulis called, “Symbiotic Earth.” Sheila invited me up to their home in the Hudson Valley near Great Barrington to “improvise the soundtrack,” an offer I feared but could not possibly resist. I had been to her home once before with Rachel Drehmann - we were in Great Barrington playing with Ken Cooper’s Berkshire Bach Festival - and after dinner (amazing!), Sheila took us up to her studio and proceeded to beat, ring, clang and sing her impressive collection of Tibetan singing bowls for about an hour. She wanted to know what would happen when the horn and bowls played together, and it was with this vision in mind that she asked me to come and stay for three days and make a soundtrack.
I am no wilting violet here but I have to admit, trying to keep up with Sheila’s work pace is exhausting. We’re about 20 years apart but her energy level is so high, I often forgot that I was the chronologically younger one. She’s a morning person; rehearsal would start at 6:00AM, which I pushed back to 6:30 because I had to “warm-up,” a concession she made graciously. We’d play for a few hours then go for a brisk 45-minute walk in the hills near her home. Breathless might be an appropriate word to describe our pace, and yet somehow we were able to converse. I loved her stories about studying abroad with Karkoschka and Ligeti. Sheila filled me in on her new opera, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” which is slated for premiere with the Seattle Opera. She told me about asking Khaled Hosseini for the rights, getting her Guggenheim Fellowship and traveling to India to study Hindustani music. She was immersed in this sound world and spoke at length about instrumentation, how to be true to the spirit of this music, and when to abandon the form and be true to her Western setting of the piece. At times she would tear up talking about the Hosseini story and the hardships faced by the women in Afghanistan. I was working on a book about my adoptive family. (It’s been released this month - see the link at the end of this article. -Ed.)
Gail Williams Q and A at Western Illinois University
Interview of the Month: Gail Williams talks to Jena Gardner at Western Illinois University
Special thanks to Jena Gardner, not only for her thoughtful questions and flowing moderation, but also for making this video available to the IHS!
Recording Horns - A Perspective from the Booth
by Marco Battistella
In February 2019, I had the pleasure of recording Kerry Turner (horn), Kristina Mascher-Turner (horn), Frank Lloyd (horn) and Lauretta Bloomer (piano) for NAXOS at the “Tonstudio Edlmair & Lenz” here in Vienna, Austria. Turner recorded his anthology of horn literature and chose our studio because of the warm acoustics of recording studio A, which turned out to be ideal for the horn sound. Additionally, the YAMAHA CF III balanced very well with the horns. Prior to the recording sessions, Kerry visited me in Vienna. We discussed different requirements critical to a good reproduction of his repertoire. Properly recording horns is quite a challenge for sound engineers and producers as the perception of both player and audience is quite diverse. The sound should be neither too direct nor too diffuse and needs to be adjusted according to the preferences of the player. So, proper sound checks, even before recording the first note, are imperative. Added to sonic preferences, horn players need to record differently than, say, piano or violin players. A pianist only needs breaks to re-tune or rest. A horn player who stresses lips and surrounding muscles too much may not be able to intonate for hours or days. So, a typical horn recording session might not exceed 2 ½ hours with longer breaks in between. Instead of recording all the repertoire in 3-4 days, horn players need to plan additional time according to their personal endurance with an additional half a day (at least) of sound check in mind.
The challenge with the Turner recording lies in the very different horn sounds of the 3 players: The engineer must respect these characteristics and try to reproduce them as authentically as possible. This means that various types of microphones must be tested at various distances from the instruments. I personally prefer to use as few microphones as possible, simply because each microphone might add color and blur the natural perceived sonic stage depth and width.
I try to achieve 90% of the end result (sonically speaking) before the recording and not during the mix afterwards. To me, this is a crucial ingredient towards an authentic reproduction.
Welcome, New IHS Area Reps
Last month, the IHS put out a call for new Area Representative applications, and you answered enthusiastically! The selection committee has made the following appointments:
Country representatives:
Denmark: Frederik Rostrup
Germany: Christoph Ess
Honduras: David Abraham Andino Fuentes
Israel: Aviram Freiberg
United States of America: Jennifer Sholtis
US state representatives:
Hawaii: Marie Lickwar
Maine: Margie Landis
Massachusetts and New Hampshire: Angela DiBartolomeo
Montana: Zachary Cooper
Utah: Daniel Omer
Washington: Mike Simpson
Please join us in welcoming these dedicated individuals to our team! Also, have a look under the “people” section of www.hornsociety.org to find out who your representative is. They want to hear about your horn events, news, ideas, and other feedback, and they can also share that information with you to connect you to other horn enthusiasts in your area.
Digital Auditions Tips & Tricks
by Julia Burtscher
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”
This quote is attributed to Will Rogers and Oscar Wilde, has been used in numerous ad campaigns and can be applied to just about any aspect of life, from handshakes to first dates to auditions and everything in between. In the late 1990’s I worked as an administrative assistant at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Part of my job was to organize the auditions we held, from receiving resumes to checking people in and shepherding them into warmup rooms and working with the personnel manager to make sure everything ran smoothly. My biggest takeaway from working these auditions was that you have six minutes or less to prove to the committee that you were worth hearing again in the next round. Six minutes. But what about recorded auditions? Certainly, they save time and money in travel, but an investment needs to be made to ensure you have the best recording possible.
After asking trusted resources and scouring the internet for actionable, tangible guidelines, I’ve compiled a list of elements to consider when preparing to record an audition for submission:
- Follow the rules! Each entity you are auditioning for may have different requirements. Make sure you read and understand the rules. If you don’t your audition can be rejected without anyone listening to it! Here are some examples of specific requirements:
- “Recordings must be recent: made no more than three months prior to application” (Aspen Music Festival)
- Each excerpt or work must be played through without stopping (Aspen Music Festival)
- Repertoire should be played in the order listed… any recordings submitted out of the proper order or with any other material than the listed repertoire will be disqualified (New York Philharmonic)
- You may create your collection in any way you like, but each piece or excerpt must be edit-free, e.g., no editing to fix bad notes. (Brevard Music Center)
Jeju International Brass Competition
Compiled by Mike Harcrow with contributions in English, German, Spanish, French, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese by Mike Harcrow, Samuel Seidenberg, Jhon Kevin López Morales (3rd prize), Yang Liu (1st prize), François Rieu, Jay Kim (2nd prize), Dr. Olivier Huebscher, Bernard Scully, Nobuaki Fukukawa, and Miwa Endo
Jeju International Brass Competition
Mike Harcrow (Adjudicator)
The 14th Annual Jeju International Brass Competition (http://jejuibc.org/english) took place from August 8-16, 2019, on scenic Jeju Island in South Korea. This prestigious competition is a member of UNESCO’s World Federation of International Music Competitions, and awards are sizable cash prizes. Categories for this year were brass quintet, tenor trombone, trumpet, and horn (and even-numbered calendar years include percussion, tuba, euphonium, and bass trombone). First-prize winners in each category also receive a new Yamaha professional-model instrument and a live, nationally-televised concerto performance with the Jeju Provincial Orchestra (https://youtu.be/88qelYRFiXs). This year, for the first time, the first-place winner in the horn division was awarded an additional monetary prize from the International Horn Society. Adjudicators for the horn division were Samuel Seidenberg (Germany), Szu-Yuan Chuang (Taiwan), Quan Wen (China), Bernhard Scully and Mike Harcrow (USA), Nobuaki Fukukawa (Japan), and head judge Young-yul Kim (Korea).
51 of 61 entrants performed in Round 1, which took place over two days in the small concert hall in Stone Park in the foothills of Mt. Halla, a long-dormant volcano that is the geographical heart of Jeju Island. 13 players advanced to a stamina-taxing Round 2; and 3 played the Final Round, the Gliere Concerto, memorized with the JPO in the Jeju Arts Center in Jeju City. The three finalists were Jhon Kevin López Morales (Colombia; third, $4,000.00), Jay Kim (Korea; second, $6,000.00), and Liu Yang (China; first $8,000.00). Zeng Yun, hornist and winner of the recent Tchaikovsky Competition, was also a member of the second-place brass quintet. Sincere congratulations to the winners—and to all the incredibly-capable and well-prepared players who competed—from your IHS family!
As a returning judge, my greatest impression of the JIBC is—as it was 8 years ago—that the future of professional horn playing around the world is not merely secure but actually better with each new generation. The confidence, technical agility, and gorgeous lyricism of these dozens of young players—Jay Kim, for example, is only 16—was truly inspiring. I was also deeply impressed by the friendliness and support of the competitors for one another; and even among the adjudicators there was a heartfelt collegiality as well as near unanimity in the very difficult (insofar as the players were all so good!) scoring process.
Below, in their native languages, are impressions from “both sides of the screen,” both from some of my colleagues on the excellent panel and from some of the competitors, many of whom are also new friends.
