1. Started playing horn at what age: 11
2. First private teacher? David Mills (now head band director at UCONN), and Mark Belcik (now Associate Dean at U Oklahoma City School of Music)
3. Favorite Composer? JS Bach (but that’s an impossibly hard question to really say)
4. Favorite piece? (Another impossibly hard question) JS Bach’s Mass in B minor
5. Most memorable concert? Performing at Midwest Clinic in Chicago with the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony in high school.
6. Most embarrassing moment on stage? Not being able to get the water out of the high F side on my descant horn before the high B-flat entrance in the second movement of Beethoven’s 4th symphony. I only had to use the high F side for the first note and when I played it was so full of water that that it sounded like a rattling percussion instrument. I asked the principal clarinet if he could hear the water after the show and said, “Hear it? I could FEEL it!!”
7. If you could not play the horn, what other instrument would you choose? Cello
8. Favorite excerpt? Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto #1”
9. Least favorite excerpt? Mahler 1
10. Mountains or Beach? Beach (but close to mountains too, like California)
11. Cats or Dogs? Cats
12. F horn or C horn? C horn
13. Treble or Bass clef? Treble clef
14. Would you rather play Ravel’s Piano Concerto or Shostakovich 5? Ravel’s Piano Concerto
15. Beer or wine? Wine
16. On the leg or off the leg? Off the leg
17. Kopprasch or Kling? Kling
18. Would you rather be stranded on a desert island with a saxophone or trumpet player? Trumpet
19. Favorite movie score? Oliver Stone’s JFK
20. “Stars and Stripes” or “Washington Post”? Washington Post
Cheers, Bernhard Scully