June Updates: Masterclasses, Botanical Melodies, and Building a Horn Army 📯
Happy June! Summer usually brings a slight shift in pace for musicians, but this month has been a whirlwind of new projects, terrifying-but-exciting performances, and a lot of stretching outside of my comfort zone.
If my goal for this journal is to document the "Eureka!" moments and the behind-the-scenes realities of a musician's life, this week gave me a semester's worth of material. Here is a look at what’s been on my stand (and off it) lately.
A Joyful Masterclass: Playing for Sarah Willis
Yesterday brought one of those "pinch me" moments that I will be unpacking in my practice journal for a long time: I had the immense privilege of playing Hermann Neuling's Bagatelle for Sarah Willis!
If you know Sarah's playing, you know she is an absolute force of nature—and completely full of joy. Getting to play for someone of her caliber, especially someone so renowned for her low horn mastery, is equal parts inspiring and nerve-wracking. But her infectious energy put me right at ease, and she completely validated the hard work I’ve put into my low register. One thing she said that immediately stuck with me is that we aren't "low horn players" or "high horn players"—we are just horn players, and we should be proficient across all ranges of our instrument.
She also gave me a massive "Eureka!" moment regarding extreme low notes: to open the right hand for the low register, the movement should come entirely from the wrist, not the elbow. She explained that moving from the elbow is too broad and wide of a movement, whereas pivoting at the wrist mimics historical natural horn technique and is infinitely more efficient. So, it looks like my next major practice project is joyfully fumbling through the Mozart concerti on natural horn to really drill this in!
Dreaming Up "Resonance of the Azores"
On the administrative and creative side of things, I am currently working on a pitch for the Tremor Festival's Terra Incógnita initiative. The project is called Resonance of the Azores. It's still very much in the dream-and-design phase, but I am incredibly excited about the concept.
The idea is a guided, site-specific sound walk designed to transform the biorhythms of the Azorean landscape into a living musical dialogue. We are proposing to use PlantWave technology to sonify endemic flora, creating a generative, ambient electronic soundscape based on the plants' real-time electrical variations. In a true symbiosis of nature and human artistry, I would love to have an ensemble of local Azorean musicians improvise live over these botanical melodies—and I'm hoping to be able to grab my horn and improvise right alongside them!
To protect the environment, the logistics are just as important as the music:
Zero Noise Pollution: The electronic soundscape and acoustic instruments would be routed into a wireless "Silent Disco" headphone system. This preserves the silence of the forest for surrounding wildlife and other hikers.
Intimate Scale: The walk would be capped at 40 participants per session to ensure intimacy, respect for the environment, and high-fidelity sound.
Eco-Friendly: The audio setup would rely entirely on clean, rechargeable lithium battery stations , and the biosensors clip gently onto the leaves without causing any harm to the ecosystem.
Putting together a festival pitch forces you to zoom out and look at the macro, which uses a completely different set of muscles than practicing does. Fingers crossed we can bring this to fruition!
The "Eureka!" Moment: Embracing Improvisation
You might be wondering why a classical hornist is pitching a fully improvised, electro-botanical set. This brings me to my next big realization of the month.
I’m currently working on my Artist Diploma through OAcademy Conservatory, and we recently had a workshop dedicated entirely to improvisation. I'll be completely honest: as a classical musician, my relationship with improvisation has historically been... non-existent. We are trained to honor the ink on the page. Taking the sheet music away usually feels like walking a tightrope without a net – eeek!
But I’ve been deliberately messing around with it this week, and it has been incredibly liberating. Once I got past the initial panic of playing a "wrong" note, I realized how much improv forces you to actively listen to your own sound and trust your musical instincts. It’s already changing the way I approach phrased rubato in my standard repertoire. If you are a strictly "dots-on-the-page" musician like me, I highly challenge you to spend five minutes of your next practice session just making things up!
Building a Horn Army in the Bluegrass
Finally, switching gears to the teaching studio! I am absolutely thrilled to share that the school district where I teach as an external horn instructor had 10 students sign up for summer lessons. Ranging from 6th all the way to 12th grade, this is on top of the private students I teach outside of this relationship. Building this mini horn army right in the heart of the Central Kentucky bluegrass region is one of the most rewarding things I get to do.
This momentum is carrying over beautifully from my teaching at Morehead State University. The MSU HornHeads had such a successful semester, performing a fantastic horn choir concert in the fall and a standout performance at the PRISM concert. Summer lessons are the best time to keep building on that success because the pressure of the school year is off, and we can just focus on the joy of playing and establishing solid technique. I can't wait to see what these students accomplish over the next few months.
Between the masterclasses, the festival planning, the improvised notes, and my growing studios, my brain is incredibly full right now—in the best way possible.