Jazz and the Horn

“The french horn can be a popular instrument, and it sounds good as a popular instrument.”

Like that of most horn players, Peter Gordon’s musical training was firmly rooted in the classical tradition. He is among the few horn players, however, whose interests and talents have led him to do most of his professional horn playing in jazz and popular music.

“I come from a musical family,” he says, understating the case. His father is a violist with the Detroit Symphony, his mother an opera singer and voice teacher, and at one time he had 16 relatives in the NBC Symphony. His parents started him on piano at the age of four and violin at six. At fourteen, thinking he might be drafted into the army in a few years, he decided to switch to a wind instrument, the better to be able to serve his time in a band.

Of all the instruments, the french horn looked and sounded the most beautiful, and it looked like it would be easy. But I was wrong, it wasn’t easy. By the time I found that out, it was too late...”

As it turned out, he didn’t get drafted, and he went to Indiana University to study horn with Philip Farkas for four years. After graduation he played first horn with the Toledo Symphony (1967-68), and then joined the Philadelphia Chamber Symphony. It folded a short time later, so he went to try his luck in the big time: New York. After playing for some months for various opera and ballet companies, he landed a job at the Metropolitan Opera. However, after three years,

I had a revelation: if I was going to stay in the Met I was going to die musically, I was going to give up music. It was terrible. The conditions were terrible, the people in the orchestra hated music. It was just so depressing. I decided that if I really wanted to stay in music, I had to quit the Met. I did, and my first job after that was Blood, Sweat and Tears. Previous to this, I had been playing off and on with small jazz groups: the Neophonic Orchestra, Brownie’s Revenge, Dancer’s Inferno. Dave Bargeron, who I knew from the studio, suggested that I take over when Tom Malone left. So I auditioned for BS&T and they liked my playing. After three months of touring with them, I joined Gil Evans’ band and Eddie Paul Harry’s band, and I played with them for several years. Also at this time I was doing studio work, Broadway, and occasionally a pick-up orchestral job here and there, but nothing steady. After quitting the Met in ’73 I did exclusively popular music for two years. But so many people wanted me for so many different gigs, I started spreading myself so thin that I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I got so dizzy that I lost sight of what was really important and I didn’t know where I was going.