Improvisation

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 8

Dale Clevenger

Principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dale Clevenger spent his Tuesday evenings playing jazz, discovering a freedom that classical training alone could not provide.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Part 1

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Performance once depended as much on informed invention as on written notes, and early horn concertos still carry that forgotten freedom in plain sight.

By Peter Damm

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 6

Peter Gordon

Classically trained but drawn elsewhere, Peter Gordon made the horn at home in jazz, studios and popular music without abandoning its orchestral foundations.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 5

Tom Varner

Choosing jazz over the orchestral path, Tom Varner confronts the horn’s stiffness, projection and unlikely place as a front-line improvising voice.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 7

John Clark

John Clark made the horn a jazz voice on its own terms, balancing improvisation, studio realities and an instrument still fighting to escape classical expectations.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 4

Thomas Bacon

Classical discipline meets jazz-rock freedom as Thomas Bacon confronts improvisation, stylistic crossover and the physical demands placed on the horn.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 2

Julius Watkins

A pioneering career, landmark recordings and collaborations with jazz legends gave the French horn a place it had never occupied before.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Part 6

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

Special jazz techniques

Vibrato, half-valves, growls and shakes lead to a larger argument: jazz transformed trumpet technique, yet its contribution remained strikingly undervalued.

By Michel Laplace

Collective improvisation in instrumental classes with different instruments

What if learning an instrument meant more than playing pieces? Roland Böckle promotes collective improvisation to develop listening, taste, and creativity.

By Roland Böckle

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 1

Jazz and the Horn

The horn was once considered incompatible with jazz until changing ideas of sound and musicians like John Graas quietly overturned that certainty.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Jazz and the Horn Series • Part 3

Jazz and the Horn

Getting started

For the classically trained horn player, jazz replaces the security of the printed page with listening, swing and improvisation—and a different kind of discipline.

By Jeffrey Agrell

Indeterminate instrumentation

A Way of Extending Instrumental Technic

Can technique go beyond notation? James Fulkerson explores new instrumental possibilities and argues that improvisation is key to expanding both technique and musical thinking.

By James Fulkerson

Part 1

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

Before Louis Armstrong became the defining figure, jazz already carried competing traditions of tone, style and technique shaped by cornet players across New Orleans and beyond.

By Michel Laplace

Possibilities for development of brass instruments (1967)

Experimental study by Vinko Globokar on extended techniques for brass instruments, covering microtonality, voice-instrument interaction and new sound production methods.

By Vinko Globokar

Part 2

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The “Classical” Period 1927-1945 — The Golden Age of the Trumpet

Between Armstrong’s rise and bebop’s arrival, the trumpet became jazz’s dominant voice, reshaping technique, orchestras, sound, mutes and virtuosity.

By Michel Laplace

Part 3

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Deliberate divisions

Improvisation, articulation and ornament were once inseparable: Peter Damm recovers an 18th-century horn practice later narrowed by increasingly precise notation.

By Peter Damm

Working with the Posaunenchor

From Württemberg youth groups to mass brass gatherings in Ulm, a community tradition links faith, education and amateur brass playing across generations.

By Max Sommerhalder

Part 3

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The pluralism of the so-called “modern” forms (1945 to the present)

Bebop, Miles Davis and the rise of the flugelhorn mark a postwar jazz landscape in which trumpet playing splintered into competing sounds and ideals.

By Michel Laplace

Jabbo Smith

The Unrecognised Jazz Trumpeter

Overshadowed by Armstrong and later by Eldridge, Jabbo Smith emerges as a crucial trumpet innovator whose speed, range and phrasing anticipated modern jazz.

By Michel Laplace