Horn studio hosts Zoom masterclasses

It’s Tuesday, March 16. Around a dozen UNL horn students, faculty and alumni are gathered on a Zoom call to hear from Jeff Nelsen, horn player of the Canadian Brass and a professor of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is talking about what life is like on the road touring with the Canadian Brass, prioritizing his time and the expectations for his abilities, among other topics.

“It’s a dream,” Nelsen said. “I can only be in one place at any time, so that simplifies being busy. I’ll do whatever I can wherever I am. I’m still trying to find balance.”

It’s one of several studios in the Glenn Korff School of Music taking advantage of professional musicians having downtime during the COVID-19 pandemic and being available via Zoom for masterclasses.

“The common rhetoric surrounding the past 14 months has been that the pandemic created extremely negative impacts throughout the entire School of Music. The acute interaction with each of our students was lost. The ability to perform alongside our students was lost. The collaboration with other musicians and artists was lost,” said Associate Professor of Horn Alan Mattingly. “Despite all this, there were certain aspects of teaching and learning that truly thrived this past year that never would have been possible during a ‘normal’ year. One of the best in the Husker Horn Studio was using Zoom to bring in guest artists during our weekly studio class.” Some of the artists who participated in the Husker Horn Studio Zoom classes, in addition to Nelsen, included Tod Bowermaster, third horn with the St. Louis Symphony; Brett Hodge, principal horn with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra; Sfc. Shawn Hagen, horn in the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own;” Skip Snead, horn professor and Director of the School of Music at the University of Alabama; and Thomas Jöstlein, associate principal horn with the St. Louis Symphony. “During the summer of 2020, I reached out to several of my colleagues across the country to ask if they would be willing to spend an hour sharing and teaching to the UNL horn community,” Mattingly said. “Because we were all in the same boat of isolation and unable to perform publicly, most were thrilled to have an avenue to engage with our students.”

Holding weekly studio classes via Zoom gave students the opportunity to engage with more world-famous pedagogues and performers than they ever have in any other semester.

“The guest artists we brought in are leading experts in the horn world,” Mattingly said. “They led topics on pedagogy, preparing for auditions, practice techniques, dealing with performance anxiety, various horn-related research, and more.”

Mattingly was happy to find positives during a time that was less than positive. “There was so much interruption caused by the pandemic, and it felt really great to find ways to utilize technology at our disposal and create some very positive engagements for our students in the Glenn Korff School of Music.”  ■

Canadian Brass horn player Jeff Nelsen meets with students, faculty and alumni during the weekly Husker Horn Studio Zoom class on March 16. Courtesy photo.

“There was so much interruption caused by the pandemic, and it felt really great to find ways to utilize technology at our disposal and create some very positive engagements for our students in the Glenn Korff School of Music.”