the project

Although the recording is brand new, the music on Paul Horn's latest release has already withstood the test of time. Beginning with a flute quartet arrangement of the Bach Siciliano, Horn takes us through some of the most quietly appealing music of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, before ending with three of the remarkable motets written in 1960 by the late Maurice Duruflé. Given the timeless beauty of these arrangements, Paul Horn could not have chosen a more simple or appropriate title for his new release, Music.

MUSIC contains some of the Baroque's most beloved works: Bach, Pachelbel, and Palestrina are all represented. The focus is on the almost extravagant beauty of the flute family - including the impossibly low sounds of the contrabass flute, created by using the Conn Multivider device. Horn's settings range from the simple purity of the alto and bass flute duet on the Cantiones Duarum Vocum by Lassus, to the massive sonorities of the three choirs of flutes used in Horn's setting of a Palestrina motet. The recording captures the almost organ-like timbre of the massed flutes with incredible clarity, and highlights the surprising experiments being made in sixteenth century Italy in the stereo placement of voices and instruments.

MUSIC is just what it claims to be. Not concerned with categories such as classical, new age, or adult alternative, Paul Horn has created a recording of great music with genuine crossover appeal for lovers of all formats.

the artist

Paul Horn is one of a handful of musicians whose music has been heard in virtually every corner of the globe. A partial list of recordings that he has made takes up thirteen pages of his autobiography, Inside Paul Horn, and includes dozens of classic albums made with some of the greatest jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, several groundbreaking records of cross-cultural music with Asian musicians like Ravi Shankar, and of course, the legendary Inside recordings of music improvised in such places as India's Taj Mahal and Egypt's Great Pyramids.

A man for whom musical boundaries have never had much meaning, Horn has played jazz, classical, traditional Indian, Brazilian, and Chinese music on his various flutes and saxophones. National boundaries have not slowed him down either; he has recorded albums in Egypt, Lithuania, China, and Brazil, among many other countries.