French Horn Player

Jacek Muzyk is a polish french horn player. Jacek was born in Ploland and lived in poland for most of his life. He began his career of playing the ferench horn at the age of seven. Jacek becan playing jazz piano and enjoyed it, however he began intensely studying the french horn at eighteen years of age.

Jacek Muzyk attemded the Academy of Music in Krakow and graduated with a Masters degree in music, with french horn as his principle instrument. Muzyk also completed anoth masters degree at Mannes College of Music in New York. In New York he studied with the famous soloist, David Jolley.

Jacek Muzyk also attended Julliard with a full scholarship and continued studying at Rice University in Houston (TX).

Upon return to Poland, Muzyk began conducting well-known large orchestras. In Poland there is a group of Poland's finest musicians is called Krystian Zimerman's Polish Festival Orchestra. In 1999 Jacek was selected as the principal horn player and toured Europe and United States with the group. With this group Jacek won a grammy and was invited to join othere Orchestras.

Jacek continued being a principle horn player, or a featured horn player with American Orchestras and European Orchestras throughout his life.

Recently as a soloist, Jacek Muzyk recorded two cds. The first was all four Mozart concertos and the second was Bach cello suites in transcryption for French horn.

I chose to reserach him because he studied at not one post secondary school, but four. I also was interested in how Jacek studied in Europe and in America. Judging by his biography he is a well rounded musician and world renowned.

Sooooo it has been quite some time since I have last posted. In today's post I am going to reflect on the practising I have been doing for the last little while (I always forget to post). So far with my french horn I have attended Nationals and I have played at the spring concert. I still have yet to do my playing test (page 22 in the 3D Band Book). I have been constantly practising the scale, especially the thirds. The only difficulty I am having with this test is the fingering changes, because if I get too quick with my tempo I will use the wrong fingerings. The only way I can improve this is to slow down and start over, eventually I will be lightning fast given the amount of time I have been practising.
I have practised The Light Eternal, Rumble on the High Plains, Rhosymedre, Carmina Burana and Chillers and Thrillers. By now Rhosymedre has become second nature and my main focus was on musicality. The light Eternal is in the smae boat. I can achieve a higher level of musicality by moving phrases and using dynamic contrasts to add empahsis on the emotion meant to be evoked.
Rumble on the High Plains went well at Music Nationals and Spring Concert... the only problem I had was counting at Nationals! I came in a beat too early... now I really look out for the 5/4 bars!
Carmina Burana really needs more emphasis put on the musicality of the piece. With more time spent with that piece I'm sure the overall outcome of Carmina Burana's debut would have been different.
Chillers and Thrillers was a little more polished than Carmina Burana, however once again with more time it would have been spectacular.
For all of these pieces I play right through them at attempted fast tempos in order to build up my tolerance of playing the french horn for long periods of time.

Until tomorrow? (If I remember :P)