Pip Eastop – Hornplayer

Quotes

• “Pip’s vast knowledge of the mechanics of the human body in relation to horn playing results in fast learning and a direct route to the desired technique/sound/style. I don’t know what I would have done without him!”

  Martin Owen F.R.A.M. Principal horn of BBC Symphony Orchestra and ex-principal horn of Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

• “The sound of the horn is the soul of the orchestra.”

  Robert Schumann

• “As well as being an amazing player and role model, his skill at digging deep into a problem and conjuring up the seemingly magical solution is extraordinary.”

  Helena Giamarco

• “O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
  And thinner, clearer, farther going!
  O sweet and far from cliff and scar
  The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!”

  Tennyson

• “No two lessons with Pip have ever been the same because he’s always finding different ways to tackle technical problems – I’ve (even in five years) never had a boring lesson.”

  Stephen James

• “I have left his lessons feeling as though I have the perfect secret weapon to becoming a brilliant horn player.”

  Nick Wolmark

• “The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,
  Is not a thing to laugh or scorn.”

  Shakespeare

• “When I learned with Pip the idea of the horn being a difficult instrument vanished and problems disolved in the same way.”

  Martin Owen F.R.A.M. Principal horn of BBC Symphony Orchestra and ex-principal horn of Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

• “Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud.”

  Richard Strauss

• “Pip never shrinks from “thinking the unthinkable”, and will investigate any possible avenue before drawing his conclusions. He will always prove these to you through his playing, to which he has applied just the same processes and techniques, and achieved an ability for whom no challenge of technique or stamina is too much.”

  Francis Markus

• “He belongs to no fixed “school” of teaching and lessons are always a very real two-way process of discovery and debate.”

  Francis Markus

• “God made some people Horn players; others are not so fortunate.”

  Anton Horner

• “It’s just an erosion of quality. To go from the George Gershwin level of composition to the John Lennon level of composition — that’s a very long drop. And history will bear that out.”

  Wynton Marsalis

• “Dunno why I even bother, really…”

  Martin Hobbs, L.P.O. during rehearsal 73 of “Love And Other Demons”, Glyndebourne Opera, 2008

• “A very approachable insight into a world of obsessive perfectionists.”

  THE INDEDPENDENT – review of “I Found My Horn”, by Jasper Rees

• “Phillip Eastop might have been Dennis Brain reincarnated (even down to the shabby look of his instrument) in the horn solos…   …Together with Rattle and the strings of the orchestra they reminded us this is an unqualified masterpiece”

  The Daily Telegraph, 1985. Review of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings – Queen Elizabeth Hall – London Sinfonietta – Simon Rattle.

• “In this issue I have invited one of the world’s greatest horn players, but more importantly an incredibly insightful musician – Pip Eastop – to write about this instrument, which reflects very well what all brass playing is about, and why we are all addicted to these wonderful instruments.”

  Alison Balsom – Guest Editor of Classical Music Magazine

• “Other than that, the only fair way to single out individual players from such a peacock display of staggering talent is to draw the listener’s attention to the holes in the ozone layer punctured by Pip Eastop’s high playing in God Bless the Child and his numerous jazz solos,”

  Jasper Rees (author of “I Found My Horn”) – in “GIVE IT ONE” CD booklet notes, 2008

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