My introduction to videomaking--in
1994, I set out to make a two-hour video about this marvelous musician who
has played his horn all over the world and even now, in his late 70s, does
master classes and special programs. (He's known me since I was born; he
and my dad first played together in the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz
Reiner and later, for many years, in the Rochester Philharmonic before Secon
left to play with the New York and the Israeli Philharmonic orchestras.)
Secon, an extraordinarily
gifted storyteller, is very comfortable in front of the camera and he has
many funny musical stories to relate. But it is his teaching that he most
wants to be remembered for--and it is his skill in "singing" a phrase on
the horn and creating a true legato that has earned him the respect of the
music world.
I followed him devotedly
to master classes at Boston University and the New England Conservatory,
to presentations where he would bring 20 or 30 different horns (including
an alp horn and Tibetan long trumpets) to schools/senior centers/homes for
the disabled schools; even to his nightly "rap sessions" that are an annual
feature at the International Horn Workshops in Kansas City; Eugene, Oregon;
and later, in Japan.
I shot hours and hours
of moderately good footage, which now rests in a box, begging for an organizational
theme and editing time. There are frustrating problems with Hi-8 masters
(!) and varying sound quality, though none insurmountable.
As painful as it is, I
probably learned the most important lesson of all from this: don't go out
and shoot unless you know why you doing it. Still, someday...
