Intergalactic Education
Nov 8th, 2012 by Serena Sretenovich
Horns, such as the oboe and bassoon, are specialty instruments. Many programs do not teach them since they are seen as too challenging for beginners. This may be a legitimate roadblock in the world of horns but it needs to be moved aside. If the middle and high school students do not learn the proper techniques of these instruments it will be even more difficult to have quality players at the college level. The first UW-Whitewater Fall Horn Festival was created in 1999 to promote horn playing at younger levels. Linda Kimball, the Horn Studio Professor at UW-Whitewater, hoped that by hosting a festival focused around the horns, for hornists of all levels, she could increase the number of horn players; as well as awareness of importance. “I didn’t want the horn to become the dinosaur of public school band programs,” Kimball says.
Hornists hard at practice
Lucky for Kimball, many of the students who have come to the festival once come back again. A major benefit to the familiar faces the festival has created is that it has proven to be a great recruiting tool for the UW-Whitewater horn studio. Kimball believes, “all of my current horn students attended either the horn festival, or the UW-Whitewater Summer Band Camps.”
Now-a-days the Fall Horn Festival is centered on themes, but they weren’t always. Music for the first couple of years was chosen from existing horn ensemble repertoires. Sometimes the themes are based off of particular styles of music; such as last year’s “Jazztastic Horn.” Horn is not usually played in the jazz style but why not start a trend? Young hornists that want to play jazz are generally discouraged from playing anything but trumpet; Kimball says she “wanted to have them experience playing the jazz style on horn.” Other times Kimball selects a theme set off of a piece of music, like this year’s theme “The Intergalactic Horn.” The Festival attendees will be playing arrangements of some of the movements of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets.” The remainder of the program will feature other “galactic” themed music ranging from Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star for the less experienced players to music from Star Trek and Star Wars for the more practiced musicians. The Festival faculty with also perform with an arrangement by Linda Kimball of Henry Mancini’s beautiful song “Moon River.”
Holiday Hornaments pictured above
Past themes have included: Holiday Hornaments, Fall Horn Fiesta and Horns Go Hollywood. One year the theme was “A Truly Moooo-ving Experience.” For this festival Kimball had the attendees lok into the ancient history of the horn; literally cow horns and conch shells. Kimball says she incorporates a lot of fun into the Festival, “If people are going to give up a Saturday to come to Whitewater, I want them to have a great time, have some fun. Play some great melodies and learn something new about the horn.”
The 1999 Fall Horn Festival saw 40 high school hornists attend to the tune of $15 a musician. Three years later, the Halloween themed Festival was the largest recorded for UW-Whitewater, with almost 120 hornists! Kimball jests, “we really didn’t fit very well on the recital hall stage!”
For the 10th anniversary festival in 2009, Kimball invited former UW-Whitewater horn students, and other adult hornists to come and play. There was a good turn-out of adult players, all who said they had a great time and encouraged Kimball to include an adult ensemble every year. “This is an important group of people who can inspire young hornists to see how they might make horn playing part of their adult life,” Kimball explained, and she has since brought back the adult ensemble for every Festival. If one looked at 100 horn students, only a handful will study music at the college level and go on to be music educators, or professional players. This is just one more reason that the introduction and accessibility to the horn is so important. Last year’s adult ensemble had folks that were grade school principals, nurses, computer programmers, band directors trying to improve their horn skills, therapists, etc. All of them were, at some point, hornists, and they all seem to have a great time meeting others like them who play horn as a hobby.