Cape Town – Under My Skin
by Stephen Laifer
On my very first day in South Africa in August 1989, I stood in line at a bank to open a new account. An elderly British man was behind me, hopping around excitedly, unable to stand still. He asked me if this was my first time in Cape Town. I replied that it was, and that I had just arrived here to take up a job in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. He explained that this was his first time back in Cape Town in 30 years, and not a day had passed when he hadn’t thought about it. “You can leave,” he said. “But you can never leave.”
Years later I still recall his words and the truth in them. These days I’ll go weeks without thinking about Cape Town, and then it’ll stealthily pop into my consciousness with an accompanying pang of loss that still feels as fresh as the day I left. When I look back on my nearly 13 years of living and working there, my overall feeling is a kind of dual-edged surprise, opposite sides of a coin: disbelief on the one hand that I stayed so long, but on the other that it all felt like it went by so quickly.
Before I get to describing the orchestral scene in South Africa, I first need to provide a picture of Cape Town and the actual boots-on-the-ground (or rather sandals-on-the-beach) experience of day to day life there. It’s one of those places that gets under your skin. Jaw-droppingly beautiful, geographically impossible, with a perfect climate rivalling San Diego, the city of Cape Town wraps around the feet of 3,000-foot-high mountains. The tallest of these, Table Mountain, is a massive flat-topped mesa that lords over all activity below and even governs the weather. Viewed from a distance the city looks improbable, like a scene digitally created for a movie. Wild nature is everywhere, even in a city of four million. If you live on the slopes of the mountain, as I did, you can wake to find a cobra sunning itself next to your pool. In the suburbs, baboons breaking into cars and raiding kitchens are a common occurrence.
Music in Malawi
By Jonathan Owen
While there are many musical groups in Malawi, they tend to be choirs (usually connected with a church) or small bands. Rock, jazz, hip-hop, rap, reggae and R&B can all be found, as well as fusions of Malawian traditional music with forms from South Africa and the Congo. It is not odd to hear bars blasting the most popular, recent gospel songs! Guitar, banjo, and keyboard are popular, and accordion finds frequent use. Some groups use commercially produced instruments, while others use instruments they have handmade—bass, guitar, and full percussion sets. Lyrics are most often in English or Chichewa, the national languages of Malawi. The annual “Lake of Stars” music festival has brought together international and Malawian artists for the last 14 years.
Classical music, on the other hand, has little current expression in Malawi. Blantyre—the economic hub of Malawi, with a population of roughly a million people—has the Blantyre Music Society, which performs a mix of choral and instrumental pieces twice a year at an amateur level. The choir has around 30 members, while the orchestra has 15-20—most of whom play strings or woodwinds. In six years of living in Blantyre, I did not hear of anyone who plays horn anywhere in Malawi. A couple of months ago I discovered a man who used to play horn in high school in Canada—but that is as close to a horn player as I have found! Trumpet and trombone are better represented, but instruments are thin on the ground. I know of one B flat horn in Malawi, but when we return to there in January, I hope to bring my horn with me—perhaps the only double horn in the country.
Jonathan Owen is a graduate of Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Becky have both been active as missionaries in Malawi since 2012. He teaches at the Evangelical Bible College of Malawi.
„Sauerländer Horntage“ erleben großartigen Erfolg
by Mathias Pfläging
Das große Symposium rund um das Horn im Herzen des Hochsauerlandes ist für viele Hornisten in Deutschland und darüber hinaus ein fester Bestandteil im Kalender geworden. Als am Freitagabend die ersten Töne im Musikbildungszentrum Südwestfalen erklangen, herrschte bei den 67 Teilnehmern, Dozenten und Ausstellern der 9. Sauerländer Horntagen gespannte Vorfreude.
Nach der Begrüßung aller Beteiligten durch den organisatorischen Leiter Uwe Becker begannen die Proben des großen Hornorchesters. Chris Brigham dirigierte sein eigens für die Horntage arrangiertes amerikanisches Volkslied „Shenandoah“, bei dem alle Teilnehmer, vom jüngsten Musiker bis hin zum Profi, gemeinsam musizierten. Nach dem gelungenen Einstieg in das Hornfestival verabschiedeten sich die 15 jungen Musiker der „Zukunftshörner“, um mit ihren beiden Dozenten Chris Brigham (Musikhochschule Detmold) und Lukas Krämer (Pro Musica Sacra Siegen) separat zu proben.
Der Samstag begann mit einem gemeinsamen „Warm up“. Kristina Mascher-Turner (American Horn Quartet) zeigte den Teilnehmern diverse Einspielmethoden zur Vorbereitung sowie zur Erweiterung der individuellen Möglichkeiten. Anschließend probten die Teilnehmer in verschiedenen Ensembles unter der Leitung eines Dozenten, um ein Stück für das Abschlusskonzert einzustudieren.
Pedagogy - Eric Terwilliger
한국어 버전
en Español
Perhaps the greatest challenge a teacher faces is finding a way to motivate their students. Sometimes even the most talented young players are not able to find a way to develop their talent to the level of mastering our wonderful instrument, while a student with average talent does.
The flame of motivation that students may have during a lesson when they strive to play their very best for their teacher, or during a concert while under the spell of an audience, may fizzle out during the long hours of practice time that are necessary to first develop their talent and then maintain the performance edge during a lifetime of happy horn playing.
I have always used mental images to motivate me. I was very fortunate to have access to an extensive collection of recordings of symphonic music when I was a child. The heroic sound of Roland Berger soaring above the Vienna Philharmonic in a Strauss tone poem became a part of my horn concept as well as the noble phrasing and velvet sound of Philip Farkas playing the first phrase of the the Brahms second piano concerto. Indeed when I was sixteen I would listen to a phrase and then run down to the basement and attempt to duplicate it.
To this day I never play a single note without filling my mind and soul with the sound of the note vibrating in the acoustic of one of my favorite halls. Before I was fortunate enough to play in these halls, I thrilled myself by imagining that I was. The mental images help me to focus my mind, eliminate distractions and keep me in the flow of the moment.
Horns for Rhinos - Outreach for Conservation
By Amy Sanchez, UCLA Lecturer- Horn
As I often tell my horn students, you never know where one gig will lead. This one started with jazz in Africa, so you can trust that it’s not a common tale…
In March of 2018, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to South Africa to perform at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival with Miguel Atwood Ferguson’s Suite for Ma Dukes (the music of legendary hip-hop producer J Dilla). I had always wanted to go on a safari “someday”, so being an opportunist in travel, my jazz gig suddenly landed me at a beautiful yet rustic safari lodge in the Greater Kruger National Park area of South Africa. I booked myself on a 3-night safari, not knowing what I was getting myself into. My guide for the safari, Willem Pietersen, was curious about my varied career in music, but was himself a wealth of knowledge about every plant, tree, insect, bird, and animal we encountered. He was so invested, I would’ve assumed guiding was his main career goal, but we discussed the necessity of diversification in building a life around your passion. In music, this often means gigging, teaching, and auditioning while working other jobs as well. For Willem, constructing a career in conservation meant juggling several other major projects while working as a full-time guide. Willem and his brother, Joe Pietersen, had a few other irons in the fire - namely, they owned Nkombe Rhino, a non-profit protecting rhinos from poaching. They were also producing and hosting a 13-episode television documentary about conservation efforts throughout the country. The series, released this past spring, is called Veldhelde (“Field Heroes” in Afrikaans). Not your average side-jobs! Needless to say, after having an incredible time on safari and making such interesting new connections in Africa, I stayed in touch after returning home and had no idea where that first “gig” would lead.
IHS-50, An Unexpected Journey
My name is Michelle Garasi. I am a Horn Instructor in Albuquerque, NM. I am also a non-traditional student at the University of New Mexico, and much like my degree path, the journey to my first IHS Symposium was an unconventional one.
My love affair with the Horn came late in high school, but two years into my music studies at Florida International University, my journey was prematurely and abruptly ended with a near fatal car accident. At the time, I chose to walk away from music-making. But many years, and many children later, I am teaching horn, and studying Horn Performance at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. My dear friend Nancy Joy encouraged me to apply to be a Guest Lecturer at the Symposium. At the time, I wasn’t an IHS member – this honor, I thought, was only reserved for a select few. Sure, I have experienced success understanding the language of teens and tweens, and auto-translating horn pedagogy into a language they could understand – but could I possibly have anything of value to offer this community? I decided to move forward, despite my doubts, and submitted an abstract representing what I had to offer.
I went about my normal purpose, to save the world, one horn at a time. The first half of 2018 represented many miles of “horn-travel”. I was a featured lecturer at the NMMEA Allstate Music Conference - the title of my lecture was “Whistling, Kissing and Pooping: Demystifying the Art of Horn Playing”. I started attending the University of New Mexico to resume my Horn studies, and began performing with the Duke City Horns. My Horn Professor, Dr. Michael Walker discussed the possibility of having Duke City Horns submit an entry for the Collegiate Quartet Competition. My first thought was “You, too!?” We began taking our rehearsals and preparations seriously and started to “interview” performance literature – we immediately loved Kerry Turner’s Sooners. Then I listened to the AHQ perform Gershwin’s Summertime, and Bernstein’s West Side Story and I was blown away. I thought “YES!” - the Duke City Horns felt the same way. As I searched the Internet, I could not find the music for purchase. I was devastated. Then I reached out to Phoenix Publications, thinking “Well, they published all of the other AHQ music – maybe they can help?” In less than 24 hours I received an email from Kristina Mascher-Turner, offering her assistance. Then I looked at the footer, and a bit of research later, I realized this was THE KM-T, and she was willing to help us! We had WSS, and Summertime was on its way after an email to Geoffrey Winter. Could this really be, that the people who were so highly accomplished, were so generous, and kind? This had to be an exception… right?
