Jake Grimsley

Mr. Zook, Horn Recital

The program for this recital was extremely diverse in nature, yet all lended itself to one

common theme, reflections. Reflections was the title of the program, and had a general meaning

that the recital was Mr. Zook’s 10th at JMU. Each piece, although coming from different

backgrounds, had direct ties back to Mr. Zook and how he came to encounter the pieces. The

first piece, “Sonata for Horn and Piano, op. 21”, written by Emil Hlobil in 1942 during the

middle of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia had a large juxtaposition from where it

came from, as although it comes from a place that may be not so incredibly happy, the music is

slightly jazzy and light. In the program notes Mr. Zook says he bought this piece from a sheet

music store in prague in 1998, and hadn’t really touched it until his preparation for this concert.

The next piece was entitled “Canticle II, Still falls the Rain: The raids 1940. Night and Dawn,

op. 55” and featured tenor vocal soloist/accompanist Jamison Walker. It was written by

Benjamin Britten, a hugely influential voice in 20th century music. The program doesn’t say

when exactly this piece was written, but it was at least written about the horrors of World War II,

to juxtapose the piece by Hlobil written during that time but without a sinister feel in the

slightest. This led to the intermission, after which was a large leap in time to a piece written in

2014 by David Maslanka, “Evening Song.” This short piece was based on one of his saxophone

quartets and appears simple and reflects relaxation, yet is much harder than it seems. Next was

“Triskelion, Neolithic Celtic Triple Spiral for Horn and Piano” by John Hilliard. This piece was

based on an ancient pattern of a triple spiral and was written specifically for Mr. Zook in 2012.

Finally, the last piece of the program was “Zwei Gesänge, op. 91” by Johannes Brahms in 1884

and featured violist Kathleen Overfield-Zook. This piece was originally written for alto, viola,
and piano, but Mr. Zook arranged in so that he would play the alto part on the horn. From a

brass pedagogy perspective, it was interesting to see Mr. Zook team up with not just the piano

accompanist Tracey Schimmel Reed, but also with two instruments which are not very similar,

one being tenor and one being viola. This makes me think as an educator about the different

situations you can encourage your students to put themselves into. There are pieces of music

written for almost every combination of instruments imaginable, and even when there’s not, as

was the case with the last piece by Brahms, there are ways to make it work, like arranging on

part for a different instrument. Encouraging students to play with non-like instruments is

something I plan to do as a teacher to give them more perspective and experience in different

situations. This performance seemed challenging to me, and one of the main things I noticed

was how incredibly consistent Mr. Zook’s buzzing technique was at every dynamic, as well as

range. This was rather inspiring to see where hard work can take you. There were also some

“growling” notes, which I had never heard of before, and don’t completely understand the

technique for, but of course that was extremely interesting to see. Some of the higher notes

seemed a little bit more difficult for Mr. Zook, as he would tense up a bit for them, but they still

sounded amazing as they came out. I had never seen the growling technique before, which made

me much or intrigued at the performance. Overall, this performance had a lot that I hadn’t seen,

and I was able to learn a lot from it as well.