Tennessee Tech faculty members traveled to Poland to represent the university at the 58th annual International Horn Symposium.
Assistant professor of horn Dr. Justin Stanley said the Tennessee Tech department of music supported the travel costs for he and his colleague Dr. Gözde Çakır Ramsey to perform in Krakow this summer. Stanley said the event attracts approximately 600 horn players from across the globe each year to share creative work and new compositions.
“We got to perform in a room full of hornists and European musicians,” Stanley said, “Playing music that we love and with an incredible collaborative pianist from the conservatory there in Krakow.”
Stanley said the symposium serves as a primary annual opportunity for the horn community to showcase diverse instrumental pairings. Stanley said he brought a flutist to the event to demonstrate the unique sound of the flute and horn performing together.
“For this organization to hear what it sounds like to have a flute and a horn together playing together is not something you get to hear every day, wherever you are,” Stanley said. “The horn symposium has been meeting annually for 58 years, and it attracts about 600 French horn players, no matter where it is in the world, every time.”
Stanley said the selection process for the international stage involves a competitive application where musicians must often fit their programming to a specific theme. Stanley said this year’s theme was “Horn in the City of Kings.”
“It meant a lot to be told that we should come back and perform again for more of a European audience,” Stanley said. “We met the host of the Krakow symposium last year when we performed at James Madison University, much, much closer by. And Gozde, our flute teacher here at Tennessee Tech and my colleague in the group, told them, ‘Hey, remember us? Remember us?’ because he loved our performance and wanted to have us back.”
Stanley said the trio, which included a Polish pianist named Olga, only had 45 minutes to rehearse together before the performance. Stanley said he and Chakar-Ramsey prepared individually at Tennessee Tech and drew upon their experience playing together in the Bryan Symphony Orchestra and the Cumberland Wind Quintet.
“We showed up and played through everything without stopping and it was pretty much concert-ready from that playthrough,” Stanley said. “We just had to touch up some spots, but she is an incredible pianist, which you might expect from a faculty member at a conservatory in Poland where Frederic Chopin is from. So a hugely rich history of piano playing in that country.”
Stanley said he uses these international experiences to show students that they can continue to travel and push themselves after college. Stanley said it is important for students to see their professors challenging themselves to excel at a high level.
“I certainly think it’s important for them to see that you can never – you can always learn more,” Stanley said. “That you can always go more places. That you can always push yourself to have a wider understanding of the musical world and the broader world around you.”
Stanley said the Tennessee Tech School of Music is unique for its size because it maintains many full-time faculty members who interact with students across different disciplines. Stanley said he hopes his travels help students understand that the goal of their practice is to eventually share a message with audiences anywhere in the world.
“Rather than being able to just play technically well on their instrument or to conduct well for a band, it’s to figure out how to inspire an audience, how to inspire future students of theirs,” Stanley said. “How to communicate a message without words through music that an audience might find meaningful, and those audiences could be anywhere in the world.”
