Paul Horn (musician)

Paul Horn
Born	March 17, 1930 (1930-03-17)
Origin	USA
Genres	Jazz New Age
Occupations	Flautist
Instruments	Flute
Associated acts	R. Carlos Nakai

Paul Horn (born March 17, 1930) is an American jazz flautist, and is considered by some to be a pioneer of New Age music.

Biography

Paul Horn was born in New York City, and began playing the piano at the age of 4 and the saxophone at the age of 12. He studied the flute in 1952 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and then earned a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Moving to Los Angeles he played with Chico Hamilton's Quintet from 1956 to 1958 and recorded his debut album Something Blue in 1960. By now an established West Coast session player he played on the Duke Ellington Orchestra's Suite Thursday and worked with Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and others. In 1970, he moved with his second wife Tryntje to Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. He formed his own quintet and has recorded film scores for the National Film Board of Canada.

He is widely known for his innovations on both metal and traditional wood flutes, and has recorded some truly exotic albums. Perhaps most famous of these are his "Inside" recordings, which feature airy, echoing sounds created in places of spiritual importance. The series began with Horn sneaking a tape recorder into the Taj Mahal during a trip to India in 1968, where he was with The Beatles at Rishikesh, and continued later with recordings inside Great Pyramid of Giza, and a return to the Taj Mahal in 1989. Horn has since made similar recordings in a cathedral, in the canyons of the Southwest with Native American flautist R. Carlos Nakai, and with orca whales.

In 1998 he was able to record within the walls of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Horn was the first westerner to be granted permission to perform inside this massive structure considered the spiritual nexus of Tibetan Buddhism. Horn was to return to Tibet in 2003 to film on the holy Mount Kailash, where Horn would scatter the ashes of former travelling companion, Buddhist monk Lama Tenzin.

While he is undoubtedly a jazz musician, many of his works defy categorization. As well as the Inside series he has recorded other albums of jazz with musicians from a range of cultures and backgrounds including China and Africa.

He now lives in British Columbia with his third wife, singer and songwriter, Ann Mortifee.

Paul is the son of Jack Leonard Horn and Frances Sper Horn. Frances J. Sper was a pianist, and recording artist. She was an in-house pianist for Irving Berlin and had her own weekly radio show in New York on WNYC from 1926-1928. Paul has two sons by his first wife Yvonne and four grandchildren.

Discography

• House of Horn (1957, Dot Records)
• Plenty of Horn (1958, Dot)
• Clutch Cargo soundtrack (1959)
• Impressions (1959, World Pacific Records) with the Paul Horn Four
• Something Blue (1960, HiFi Jazz)
• The Jazz Years (1961)
• Sound of Paul Horn (1961, Columbia Records)
• The Sound of Paul Horn (1961, Columbia) with vibraphonist Emil Richards
• Profile of a Jazz Musician (1962, Columbia) also with Richards
• Impressions of Cleopatra (1963, Columbia)
• Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts (1964, RCA Victor) with Lalo Schifrin
• Cycle (1965, RCA Victor)
• Here's That Rainy Day (1966, RCA Victor) with Quintet
• Monday, Monday (1966, RCA Victor) arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson
• Paul Horn In India (1967, World Pacific)
• Paul Horn In Kashmir (1967, World Pacific)
• Inside (1969, Epic Records) (also known as Inside the Taj Mahal)
• Inside II, (1972)
• Visions (1974)
• The Altitude of the Sun (1975)
• Special Edition (1975)
• Nexus (1975)
• Inside the Great Pyramid (1976)
• Riviera Concert (1977)
• Dream Machine (1978)
• China (1981)
• Inside the Cathedral (1983)
• Traveler (1985)
• Sketches: A Collection (1986)
• The Peace Album (1988) - music for Christmas
• Brazilian Images (1989)
• Inside the Taj Mahal, Volume 2 (1989)
• Nomad (1990)
• Africa (1994)
• Music (1997)
• Inside Canyon de Chelly (1997) - with R. Carlos Nakai
• Inside Monument Valley (1999) - with Nakai
• Tibet: Journey to the Roof of the World (2000)
• Imprompture (2001)
• Journey Inside Tibet (2001)

As sideman

With Lorez Alexandria

• More of the Great Lorez Alexandria (Impulse!, 1964)

Filmography

• A Bucket of Blood (1959) (saxophone solo intro)

External links

• Paul Horn's official website
• Horn at the Internet Movie Database website