Welcome to the Northern Horn Club

Area Representatives

Please don't forget to keep in touch with your area representatives whose remit is to liaise with their local players and orchestras and generally spread the word about the Northern Horn Club in their locality. There's always the possibility of arranging smaller scale meetings (with the loan of music from our extensive library) or of the NHC doing a concert event - please get in touch with your area representative via the contacts link above.

Two booklets 'Horn Warm Ups' and 'Beyond the Warm Up' by Bob Ashworth are available from June Emerson Wind Music - click on titles for links.

and Bob Ashworth, through his publishing venture edition db, publishes 'Jeff'sWarm Up' by re-nowned player and teacher Jeff Bryant.

Jeff's Warm Up: Three Warm Ups for Horn by Jeff Bryant - review by Richard Bissill

Over the many years that I have taught at Guildhall School of Music and Drama the inevitable topic of warming up always crops up. I've never really been that methodical about warming up. I do what I do - noodling around some random flexibility patterns across the range to test the water each day until I'm satisfied that my embouchure will do what's needed - and generally suggest that the students make up their own versions whilst occasionally feeling that I should have something more concrete to suggest.

When it came to discussing this with students shared between the professors, the students of Jeff Bryant would say to me, “I do Jeff's warm up” and I'd think to myself, “what is this mysterious warm up that they all do?” So I'd ask for a look and, various much-photocopied scrappy bits of manuscript would be produced to reveal a series of exercises that sort of looked familiar. I realised that they were the very things that all horn players could do if they were looking for a well thought out, consistent and thorough system of warming up.

Well, Jeff has finally had these tried-and-tested exercises published by edition db. At the beginning he sets out his philosophy on warming up, aimed towards achieving his “holy grail”- which you'll discover when you buy the book. These principles served him well over his 47-year career playing principal horn, so they definitely work!

The book is in three sections. The first two, the “Start Up Warm Up” and the “Intermediate Warm Up" are simplified versions of the “Full Warm Up". Jeff recommends doing a warm up without fail every day but warns against becoming a “warm up junkie". The warm ups include breathing exercises, mouthpiece buzzing, harmonic series slurs, arpeggio flexibili-ties and control exercises.

Every horn player wants to play consistently and to feel confident from day to day, and Jeff's Warm Up can certainly help towards achieving this goal. At the end of the book are endorsements from some of Jeff's colleagues and former students in the horn-playing profession who warmly attest to the efficacy of everything contained within its pages.

£21.50 from http://www.editiondb.com/edb%20home.htm (edb 0101006)

Richard Bissill, for The Horn Player, Vol.19 #1, Spring 2022

Bob Ashworth's more recent book 'Kaleidoscope - a practice book for horn players' is available at www.edotiondb.com

Built on his strong foundation of professional experience that includes 43 years as a member of Opera North, many years of teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music and other institutions, and natural horn background, Bob Ashworth’s Kaleidoscope offers a wide array of original and classic pedagogical material that “expand on some of the ideas within” his two previous books, Horn Warm Ups and Beyond the Warm Up (Emerson Edition). Among the areas of technique addressed are breathing ; posture; tone centering; portamento; articulation; flexibility, and power. Warm-up exercises are thoughtfully ordered and progressive. The author states, “Kaleidoscope can be used as a warm-up in itself starting from the beginning, but I envisage readers … choosing pages specifically to deal with certain issues or excerpts.”

Concise annotations provide insightful and interesting commentary to the exercises he offers. Ashworth generously cites his numerous sources – Dauprat, Dufrasne, Duvernoy, Farkas, Mengozzi, Terwilliger, and Thevet, to name but a few. His perspectives are a rich blend of his personal journey with the horn and immersion in centuries of pedagogical literature. If a revised edition is published, the addition of clearer topic headings or chapter divisions, a table of contents, and a comprehensive index would make this valuable information more user-friendly.

Two aspects of Kaleidoscope merit special mention. First, presentation of fundamental material is regularly followed by musical examples from orchestral, vocal, or varied instrumental repertoire that apply the technical skill just addressed. Musical examples abound. Second, a substantial portion of this book id devoted to aspects of Bel Canto  singing as it directly applies to horn playing and musicianship.

Bob Ashworth’s Kaleidoscope  is an excellent addition to our pedagogical literature.

£24.50 from http://www.editiondb.com/edb%20home.htm (edb 0101007)

Randy Gardner, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Second Horn, retired, Temple University, Artist-In-Residence.

Randy Gardner, The Horn Call, IHS, Spring 2026