Jeffrey Agrell

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About Jeffrey Agrell

Jeffrey Agrell has earned his living playing and teaching horn since college. After a first career as a symphony orchestra musician, he has been horn professor at the University of Iowa since 2000.
He has performed and taught the full gamut of horn literature, including the repertoire for symphony orchestra, opera, musicals, ballet, operetta, and chamber music, while stretching personal artistic boundaries beyond the orchestra as a educator, composer, writer, clinician, recording artist, and solo performer. He is a former two-term member of the Advisory Council of the International Horn Society, has been a member of the faculty of the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong, and has taught at the prestigious Kendall Betts Horn Camp since 2005.
Besides performing, he has won awards as both a writer and composer, with well over one hundred published articles and nine books to his credit, most recently, Horn Technique (447 p., 2017) and The Creative Hornist (228 p., 2017). He is an expert on classical improvisation, and has authored landmark books in this area, including Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians, Vol. I (2008) and Vol. II (2016).
Outside of horn and writing, he is a used-to-be amateur jazz guitarist, and currently an enthusiastic, if not particularly skilled conga drum player.

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Books By Jeffrey Agrell

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Preparatory Kopprasch: Horn Etudes (Millenium Kopprasch Series) Sep 28, 2018

by Jeffrey Agrell

$6.99

The most popular all-time etude collection for horn are the 60 Etudes (op. 6) by German hornist and composer Georg Kopprasch (c. 1800 – c. 1850). Kopprasch etudes are part of the education of every horn player, and are widely used by low brasses as well. These etudes are sometimes first encountered by high school level players; more often the player is in college before undertaking them. Kopprasch etudes contain the basics of horn technique, that is, scales and arpeggios, but at a level that is well beyond the ability of novice players.

Enter Preparatory Kopprasch. This new volume takes the spirit and general approach of the original and provides “stepping stone” etudes for young players by reducing the range and length of the originals, and occasionally making other adjustments to enable novice players to experience the material similar to the original Kopprasch etudes. Players who use this preparatory material will very likely be ready and able to tackle the original Kopprasch etudes much earlier and more easily than before.

Other Formats: Paperback

Horn Technique: A New Approach to an Old Instrument Apr 22, 2017

by Jeffrey Agrell

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$9.99

The horn (AKA the French horn) is a captivating concatenation of curving copper that is renowned for being perhaps the most beautiful of musical instruments in its shape and sound, but also the scariest and most unpredictable to play. This book (fifteen years in the making) is a new look at how this beautiful beast really works.

Horn players are blessed for the quantity and quality of repertoire and pedagogical materials in their tradition, but cursed at the same time for letting that tradition mute curiosity about what is still missing and what should be part of horn study in this new millennium. Horn Technique is a detailed, thoughtful (and occasionally tongue-in-cheek) look at ways old and new to get from one note to another, plus many illustrated suggestions about the most efficient ways to teach the instrument to students at any level.

It is a comprehensive resource for teachers, and a combination road map and gold mine of information for serious students. Above all, it encourages the reader/player to combine the book’s approach with what they already do, and, fueled by curiosity and imagination, to use the book as a springboard to make new discoveries about the best ways to master this ancient and amazing instrument.

Other Formats: Paperback

The Creative Hornist: Essays, Rants, and Odes for the Classical Horn Player on Creative Music Making Sep 19, 2017

by Jeffrey Agrell

( 2 )

$9.99

Conventional horn wisdom has always been that one simply doesn’t go exploring with the horn. It simply isn’t done. You play the ink. Basta! Other instruments – say, instruments with a jazz tradition – are allowed off the leash, but horn? Uh-uh, no way, no how. It’s too difficult. It’s dumb. It’s dangerous (you might make a mistake!). It’s scary. It’s not the norm. It’s embarrassing. You’re too young. You’re too old. You haven’t had the proper training. You don’t have time. It’s against the rules/tradition/laws of man and nature. Why bother? There’s nothing out that there that the experts haven’t already discovered. What are you going to play, anyway? If you try to make something up, it will sound mistake-ridden and bad. Who do you think you are? Remember what happened to Icarus and his winged experiments! Be sensible! Just. Don’t.
The arguments, brimming propriety and good sense, go on and on. They are, in fact, built in to our unconscious fundamental understanding of our definition of horn playing, so that the mere idea of ‘exploring’ with the horn almost never occurs to us, and any flicker of desire to do so is immediately rejected – if it ever surfaces at all. The Creative Hornist is a collection of countervailing and iconoclastic essays and information to persuade you to create your own music and discover your own musical voice. Don’t wait any longer. Start now – today! – enjoying the other half of music and musicianship that has been missing.

Other Formats: Paperback

Rhythm Kopprasch: Vol. I (Millennium Kopprasch Series) May 25, 2018

by Jeffrey Agrell

( 1 )

$5.99

The most popular all-time etude collection for horn (also used by low brasses) are the 60 Etudes (op. 6) by German hornist and composer Georg Kopprasch (c. 1800 – c. 1850). The Kopprasch etudes are more mechanical than musical in content and are useful to work on the basics of music: scales and arpeggios. There’s just one problem with a diet of pure Kopprasch (as we familiarly refer to the whole collection): K etudes are great preparation for the early 19th century, but if we look around it should be apparent that the world is a different place than it was back then. Clothing, medicine, sports, communication – on and on – are all very different now from then. Shouldn’t musical studies also reflect the demands of the current era?

Enter the Millennium Kopprasch Series, of which Rhythm Kopprasch Vol. I is the first. This series takes the original etudes and dramatically extends them in various ways so that the musician of today can acquire the depth and breadth of skills they need to survive and thrive almost two hundred years after the original etudes were written. Rhythm Kopprasch uses the original pitches, but applies them to a vastly more challenging array of rhythms, meters, accents, and styles. The player who knows the originals with their very simple rhythms and meters can take their technique to the next level by revisiting the original pitches in RK in these new rhythmic contexts.

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