Nozomu Segawa

Nozomu Segawa’s service to the IHS has been significant in bridging gaps, especially language, with Japan and Asia in general during his two terms on the IHS Advisory Council (2006-2012) and since. He has participated in 16 IHS symposiums, often directing the Japan Horn Society horn ensemble, including in 2019 in Ghent. He has been executive director of the society for more than two decades.

Nozomu is a freelance horn player in Japan and professor at the Nippon Sport Science University. He teaches rhythm for athletes, including Olympic medalists. His dissertation “Effects of horn performance during outdoor education toward campers” (2013) was written from alphorn, conch, and hunting horn experience at the university’s annual summer camp and skiing camp. He also conducted research on the relationship between Intra-Oral Pressure and Flow-Velocity in Horn Playing (2003).

His compositions include Tekona Fanfare for three alphorns (2001), Fusehime for conch and alphorn (2006), A Girl and a Cross for horn and organ with choreography of an Okinawa folk dance (200&), and works for oboe and alphorn, horn and alphorn, and conch and alphorn.

Nozomu earned diplomas in horn with Kozo Moriyama at the University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo and with Otto Schmitz at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Munich. He was a contract member of the Orchestra of the Beethovenhalle and a member of the Classical Philharmonic, both in Bonn. He has translated (German to Japanese) masterclasses by teachers such as Peter Damm, Frøydis Ree Wekre, and Radovan Vlatković. He conducts junior, university, and city orchestras, represents the ensemble Chocolat Virtuoso Japan, and is a member of the horn/alphorn quartet Ensemble Forest.

Tom Varner

Tom Varner is known as one of the top living pioneers of jazz and improvisation on the horn, an inventive and passionate composer for his various ensembles, and an authority on jazz horn history and repertoire.

Tom was born in 1957 and grew up in New Jersey, and studied piano with Capitola Dickerson. He started playing horn in fourth grade, choosing it from a photo. He started taking private lessons during his freshman year of high school, concentrating on classical music. When he got interested in jazz, he thought he would have to listen to it but never be able to play it because of his instrument until a friend introduced him to a Thelonius Monk record with a horn solo (by Julius Watkins). Tom played in school and community orchestras, but also the school jazz big band. He studied briefly in 1976 with jazz horn pioneer Julius Watkins, gaining confidence that playing jazz on the horn was possible.

Tom studied for two years at Oberlin College, then transferred to the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), where he studied horn with Thomas Newell and jazz improvisation and composition with Ran Blake, George Russell, and Jaki Byard and earned a BM in 1979. He holds an MA (2005) from the City College of New York, where he studied with Jim McNeely, Scott Reeves, and John Patitucci. Tom lived in New York City for 26 years, moving to Seattle in 2005.

Tom appears on more than 70 albums and has recorded 14 albums as a composer/leader. He has been in the Down Beat Critics Poll Top Ten annually since the mid-1990s and has been awarded grants from the Jack Straw Foundation, Seattle’s 4Culture, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation, and has been a resident at the MacDowell, Blue Mountain, and Centrum arts colonies.

Sidemen on his albums as leader have included Steve Wilson, Tony Malaby, Ed Jackson, Ellery Eskelin, Tom Rainey, Cameron Brown, Drew Gress, Matt Wilson, Kenny Barron, Victor Lewis, Fred Hopkins, and Billy Hart. He has performed and recorded with Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, McCoy Tyner, the Mingus Orchestra, and many others. His influences include Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Anthony Braxton, Sonny Rollins, and minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. His first album featured horn, alto sax, bass, and drums. Later albums were for a quintet of horn, two saxes, bass, and drums, with frequent guest artists. Nine Surprises is for a nonet of three brass, four reeds, and bass and drums.

Many of Tom’s albums reflect both serious and humorous interest in religion, in particular the first century, the upheaval of the Roman Empire, the first 200 years of Christianity, and also Hollywood Bible movies. Although he grew up in New Jersey, his parents were both from a small town in Missouri, and Tom went to church every week growing up. Other influences are science and sci-fi, mythology and folklore, Americana and urban kitsch, James Brown and 20th-century music.

Tom is now Associate Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He has written articles on Julius Watkins and afterwards for The Horn Call (1988, 1989). While living in New York City, he organized the first Julius Watkins Jazz French Horn Festival, featuring himself, Mark Taylor, John Clark, and Vincent Chancey. He plays a Paxman 20M full double horn.

Tom was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 2020.

Vicente Zarzo (1938-2021)

Vincente Zarzo Pitarch was a Spanish horn player who performed and taught in many parts of the world, but especially in Spain, Mexico, and the Netherlands, and wrote horn etudes and books on the history of the horn.

Zarzo was born in 1938 in Benaguacil, Valencia and studied at the Conservatorio Superior de Música Joaquin Rodrigo in Valencia and later with Hans Noeth in Munich, Germany.

Zarzo had positions as solo horn with the Valencia Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica del Gran Teatro del Liceo de Barcelona, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the American Wind Symphony of Pittsburg, the National Orchestra of Mexico, and for 25 years with the Residentie Orkest of The Hague, Netherlands. As a soloist, he performed with the Orquesta Municipal de Valencia, Orquesta de Valladolid, Orquesta de Oviedo, Orquesta de Tenerife, Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Orquesta Sinfónica de Port (Portugal), Philharmonic Orchestra of Groningen (Netherlands), Orquesta Nacional de México, National Orchstra of Reykjavik (Iceland), and others.

Zarzo was professor of horn and natural horn at the University of Mexico, the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and at the Conservatoire de Musique in Montreux, Switzerland. He was a guest professor at Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia, Conservatorio Superior del Liceo in Barcelona, and the Conservatory of Music and Dance of the Balearic Islands (Palma, Mallorca). He recorded the Brahms Horn Trio, the Hindemith concertos, works of Amando Blanquer, and the Mozart Quintet K452 with Radu Lupu (nominated for the Grand Prix du Disc).

Composers who have written works especially for Zarzo include Wim Laman (Quaterni II), Jan Van Vlijmen (Confronti horn concerto), Hans Henkemans (Concert), Paul de Ro, Eduardo Mata (Sinfónica No. 3), and Amando Blanquer (Sonata and Concierto para 4 trompas y orquesta).

Zarzo was honored with the Punto award at the 2004 International Horn Symposium in Valencia, Spain. In the same year, the Valencia Academy of Music appointed him as “Insigne de la Musica of Valencia.” A street in central Granada, Andalusia, Spain is named for him: Calle Músico Vicente Zarzo. He wrote an article about his collection of horns for the February 1995 issue of The Horn Call. He was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 2020.

Image by JuanMartinezRodriguez / CC BY-SA

William Scharnberg

William (Bill) Scharnberg, distinguished performer and teacher, began attending International Horn Workshops in 1973, becoming a life member in 1975 and serving in many capacities over the years. He has inspired students and added to the horn literature with commissions.

Bill earned BM, MA, MFA, and DMA degrees from the University of Iowa. He studied with Paul Anderson at the University of Iowa, with summer lessons from Louis Stout and Philip Farkas. He joined the faculty of the University of North Texas in 1983 and retired in 2018 as a Regents Professor with a horn class of fifty students. Previously he had taught at Central Missouri State University (1973-74), Pacific Lutheran University (1975-77), the University of Oklahoma (1977-83), the Royal Academy of Music Stockholm (fall of 1987). At each of these institutions he was also a member of faculty woodwind and brass ensembles.

Fourteen students were mentored through the DMA degree, all of whom are either teaching at a university and/or performing in an orchestra, with two recently retired from universities. Over thirty students who did not pursue or finish the DMA degree won jobs in orchestras or at universities. Many more have become successful public-school teachers or pursued careers outside music. “I am honored to have had the privilege of working with so many talented students,” he says, “and I am proud of their individual achievements.”

Bill performed as principal horn of the Tri-City (now Quad-City) Orchestra, Tacoma Symphony, Flathead Festival Orchestra, Royal Opera Orchestra (Stockholm), Dallas Symphony, Dallas Ballet, Dallas Chamber Orchestra, Breckenridge Music Festival, Big Sky Orchestra, Intermountain Opera, and Dallas Opera (1984-2016), and has been principal horn of the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra since 2007. He has performed at international and regional horn conventions, in recital at universities, concerti with regional ensembles, as a chamber musician at festivals, and recorded on Crystal, EcoClassics, Centaur, and Klavier labels.

He commissioned and premiered works by Paul Chihara, David Maslanka, Cindy McTee, Anthony Plog, and Kim Scharnberg. His editions of 18th and 19th-century horn works were published by McCoy’s Horn Library.

Bill served the IHS as an Advisory Council member (1986-1992, 1999-2003), Workshop Coordinator (1981-1998), President (1990-1992), Music Review Editor (1981-2003), Editor of The Horn Call (2003-2020), and host of two IHS Horn Symposiums (1991, 2012). He was awarded the IHS Service Medal of Honor in 2017.