The Creative Hornist
Jeffrey Agrell, Series Editor
21st-Century Renaissance Man: Eric McIntyre
L
et’s make a series of progressively
more selective lists and see who’s
on the last one. Horn players: re-
ally, really long list. Professional horn
players: much shorter, but still pretty
long. Professional horn players who are
composers. Smaller yet, but much more
wieldy. A few of the names that (ran-
domly) come to mind on this list include Eric McIntrye
Douglas Hill, Richard Bissill, Verne
Reynolds, RanEdall Faust, Kerry Turner, David Amram, Gun-
ther Schuller, Paul Basler, and just about all jazz horn players.
Next: professional horn players who are composers of note and
are also conductors. Not just once-in-a-while conductors, but
professional conductors. I may be missing some, but it looks
like that leaves us with two names: Gunther Schuller and Eric
McIntyre. If we continued the listings, I suspect that Eric would
be the only name on it: natural horn player. Improviser. Cham-
ber musician. Actor. College professor. Theory/composition/
conducting teacher. And I haven’t even gotten to the parts
about his sense of humor or that he is
a father of two and lives on a farm and
raises goats, sheep, turkeys, chickens,
geese, and llamas. Did I mention that he
also plays guitar and flute and makes
his own venison sausage?
Since this column is about the creative side of horn players,
let me quickly go over a few (selected) details of the other parts
of Eric McIntyre’s career and get on to the interesting stuff. No
slouch as a horn player, Eric has a masters degree in horn per-
formance from Indiana University, where he also received the
prestigious Performer’s Certificate. After a year studying horn
at an academy in Poland, he next picked up a DMA in compo-
sition (plus conducting studies) at the University of Houston,
while he worked on the side as a professional hornist in the
Houston Ballet and Houston Grand Opera plus some perform-
ing with the Houston Symphony. He has been the orchestra
director and a professor of music at Grinnell College since 2003,
as well as music director of three other symphony orchestras
in Iowa. As a composer he has many commissions in every
category from solo instrument to chamber music to symphonic
band and large orchestra, and has won numerous composition
awards and competitions.
So far, this is your standard Renaissance man: pro level
horn playing, composing, conducting. But it’s still not enough
to get mentioned in this column without something more tran-
scendent.
A person stays pretty busy acquiring all these skills, but it
takes some kind of neural lightning bolt to effect a rearranging
of the synapses to see the world a bit differently and overcome
the narrow vision, the blinders that traditional education puts
on all of us. What did it for him?
“My tastes in concert music in high school were pretty re-
actionary. I didn’t like modern music. It really bothered me
that people wrote like this. Even Stravinsky rankled me. Then
I went to a Houston Symphony concert where they premiered
a work by Christopher Rouse. And… it was great! I loved it. It
was Rock music, yet really crunchy and aggressive. Bit by bit,
before I knew it, I had new ears, and started to learn how to
listen.”
Bit by bit. In the summer of 1989 Eric went to a jazz festi-
val. Near the end was Miles Davis. “Miles was on stage with
about fifteen synthesizers. He played a note on trumpet about
every five minutes. A reviewer said, ‘Miles was the only one
on the program who tapped into his jazz roots.’ The next year
I went again. Miles was up there with the same rig. Over the
course of that set my mind had a complete gestalt shift as to
what could be done on the fly as a musician, what true music
making was. One moment he and the band started playing
counterpoint that Bach would have been envious of – off the
top of their head. They just mesmerized everyone. I realized
that Miles had not changed; I had grown “new ears” in the
year since I heard him last. It dawned on me that I needed to
grow new ears every day for the rest of my life. That was the
greatest influence on my musical life: that one moment where
that revelation hit me. I could never do what he did, but it
showed me what could be done in thin air by truly great musi-
cians.”
After he began at Grinnell in 2003, Eric enjoyed the free-
dom to experiment with all manner of music explorations. “I
had written a piece in 1996 about a Lewis Carroll poem and I
started to find unusual sounds to fit it. I discovered that there is
great educational value in exploring sound and music with the
horn, like being in a dark room and walking around bumping
into things. So I ‘wandered around’ with the horn ‘in the dark’
to see what I could discover.”
“I did a summer project with student cellist Daniel Fu-
ruta. We ‘wandered around’ on our instruments and tried
out all kinds of sounds that you usually don’t hear, such as
with found objects. I got a grant to buy old horns on eBay. I
took them apart and reconfigured them. I also started collect-
ing farmer’s pitchforks and combined them with the horn and
altered horns. Daniel was writing graphic scores, and I would
realize them with my horns. We learned from each other. Bit
by bit I found that I was improvising as a musician and not as
a hornist.”
“The culmination was when I got a grant in 2008 to do sev-
eral concerts around the state of what I call “narrative impro-
visation,” with Daniel and vocalist and dancer Kim Fitch. This
theatrical chamber music included the Lewis Carroll piece and
a commission by Robert Nelson of Houston, a wonderful piece
where everyone who plays also has to speak lines. We had two
notated pieces plus two narrative improvisation pieces. Mine
The Horn Call - October 2011 55
 The Creative Hornist
was about Chicken Little. I outlined the story; Kim improvised
the text and Daniel and I made up music. Kim brought in a
story about Boy George doing a trash detail. Daniel brought in
a book of 19th century medical anomalies, and he would pick
a page from the book. The first one was ‘Noses of unusual sizes
throughout history.’ It was great fun and funny. You should
be able to laugh at what you’re doing. The problem in the 60s
was that it was all too serious –all those black berets and clove
cigarettes.”
Below are photos from a show entitled “Chimera” that Eric
did with Daniel Furuta (normally a cellist, but here playing
computer and sax) that was performed for an art opening in
July 2007. All of the pieces dealt with oddly combined animal
parts and such. Which explains Eric’s choice of attire plus his
assortment of instruments: “natural horn-with-chimeric horn
pitch fork thing” (pick-up inside the bell), electric guitar, plus
various animal calls, what he calls his HWAB (horn without a
bell). as an introduction to transposition, as each pattern is repeated
Eric has done numerous off-the-wall performances of
various sorts, rich in imagination and highly enjoyed by audi-
ences. He has also tried what few hornists do or dare to do:
improvise – really improvise – a classical cadenza in concert.
He performed the Rosetti D minor Concerto for horn with the
Grinnell college orchestra and improvised a new cadenza in
every rehearsal as well as in the concert. “It was the first time
I ‘wandered around’ on horn in a public forum,” he says. “I
thought: I’m just going to get lost. It will be informed by the
Rosetti concerto, so it will be all right. When you view a sculp-
ture – like the David in Florence – you should ‘give it a perfor-
mance’ – see it from as many perspectives as possible.” And so
he did. You can hear his unique cadenza at web.grinnell.edu/
individuals/mcintyr2/horn/Rosetticadenza.mp3
Judging by everything conductor/composer/hornist/im-
proviser/educator/farmer Eric’s imagination has wandered
into so far, we can’t wait to see where his wandering takes him
next.
Jeffrey Agrell is professor of horn at the University of Iowa. Blog:
horninsights.com
56 The Horn Call - October 2011
Reports from the 43rd International
Horn Symposium
View from a Teacher
This was my first international horn symposium; here are
some of my impressions.
Exhibits: A variety of literature and teaching materials was
available at the exhibits. I was lucky to locate a nearby ATM
machine, because not every vendor was set up to take credit
cards.
One of the many useful books for teaching purposes that I
discovered was a seven-page treasure, First Lip Slurs for Horn,
by Dr. Howard Hilliard (Cornocopia Press). My beginning and
intermediate students are profiting from it because it simul-
taneously teaches air use, middle and low range, arpeggios,
listening skills, and concepts of the natural horn. The patterns
include some that include skips of a 6th that demand proper
air use while offering ear training. These exercises also serve
in descending valve combinations on the F horn.
Workshops: BE: The Balanced Embouchure Method, pre-
sented by Valerie Wells with Stephen Park. This workshop
presented an approach to embouchure development that was
100% new to me. Valerie and Stephen demonstrated the ex-
ercises up close and personal, which was essential because
I had no idea it was legal or possible, let alone beneficial, to
do such odd things with a face. I had only two choices: write
them off as nuts or try it. Given Valerie’s stunning demonstra-
tions of producing super high, pianissimo, pure pitches out of
thin air, and given Stephen’s gorgeous sound and security as
a performer (search for Steve Park to find some lovely video
performances), I chose the latter. And sure enough, the BE ex-
ercises do not demand the dreaded “embouchure change” but
do lead to embouchure improvement in all registers. I recom-
mend their website (beforhorn.blogspot.com) as a source of
information for those not at the workshop.
Memorable Performers and Performances: Frank Lloyd’s
performance of the J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in d minor. I
had no idea this kind of effortless agility was possible! With no
compromise of tempo or accuracy, he somehow played the full
range of the organ. Stunning!
William VerMeulen’s performance of Steamboat Stomp. He
warned the audience that we were about to experience a fun
and wild ride. What a hoot!! He was clearly having as much
fun as we were.
Gail Williams, horn, and Benjamin Ring, percussion, Alec
Wilder’s Solo Suite for Horn and Improvisatory Percussion. The
charming and artistic collaboration between the amazing and
experienced Gail Williams and this 13-year old imaginative
and poised percussionist was something to behold. I do believe
we were all touched on both an artistic and a human level.
Gail Williams and Nicole Cash, with fine string players,
Beethoven’s Sextet in Eb Op. 81b. We have all practiced the
horn parts to this work. One can only guess that a factor in the
perfect intonation and balance between the two horn perform-
ers was that Nicole is a former student of Gail’s (as well as of
William VerMeulen).
CD: A CD to get You in the mood for the 44th IHS Sympo-
sium in Texas next May: Texas Horns features 12 horn players
from the Dallas and Houston Symphony Orchestras, including
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