Back in 1969 I met Barry at an event at Dartmouth College and got a signed postcard from him. Amazingly I found this postcard just laying on a shelf in my home office closet shortly after I started playing the horn again. 40 years later! It was almost like a sign saying ‘go play that horn again girl’.

Signed Postcard by Barry Tuckwell

Tina and Barry with Postcard

At lunch I mentioned to Barry that we met once, which of course he didn’t remember, and asked him if he would mind signing my postcard again. I brought the postcard to the horn choir rehearsal and got it signed along with a picture of me and Barry.

Wednesday afternoon’s horn choir rehearsal was actually our second rehearsal. We did have a rehearsal on Tuesday evening which I forgot to mention in that post. We are playing “Cantos IV: Das Alte Jahr Vergangen Ist, Ein Feste Burg” (that’s a mouthful) by Samuel Scheidt, “Fanfare from La Peri” by Paul Dukas, and “Hansel and Gretel: Prelude – Chorale” by Engelbert Humperdinck. The Cantos is made up of two horn choirs and I played 3rd horn in the second choir. I played 5th horn for the other two pieces.

Cantos IV Music

Fanfare from La Peri Music

Hansel und Gretel Music

I was very happy that the horn choir music was fairly easy. It made the whole experience of playing in the choir with Barry conducting relaxing and enjoyable, plus we all sounded awesome.

There were two other sessions in the afternoon. One was a master class on the natural horn lead by Jean Rife. I really enjoyed this class. Jean brought several different natural horns, gave some really good demonstrations of the capabilities of the horns, and had some of us try the horns and play some duets with her.

The other class of the afternoon was a faculty session titled, “If only I could…(Fixing those nasty little shortcomings in your horn playing)” led by Mary Bisson. For these faculty sessions we were divided up into small groups so we could really zero in on our specific issues. In the class I was in we worked on lip trills, flutter tonguing, double and triple tonguing and we talked about transposition, sight-reading and nerves.

After dinner we were treated to “An Evening with Barry Tuckwell.” It was wonderful to hear him talk about his career and relay some funny stories. He even spoke about his last performance where he didn’t play the last note.

BTI – Thursday –>