Walter Horn profile picture

Walter Horn

About Me

Walter Horn has been writing music since he was 13--over 40 years ago. He studied classical composition with Ronald Perrara and Karel Husa, before moving into the worlds of free jazz and improv. He has collaborated with Beefheart guitarist (and childhood buddy) Gary Lucas on a number of projects, including scoring the silent film 'Der Golem,' which they have performed in New York, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Munich, Germany. Horn recently performed this highly acclaimed score in the Boston area with guitarist Jonathan Fixler. Others he has played with include violinists Mat Maneri and Katt Hernandez, saxophonist Eric Hipp, drummer Johnny McLellan, guitarist Jason Bivins, and trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez. His work as a sideman can be found on the Tzadik and Enemy labels.Walto has released two CDs himself, "Screwdriver!" (on Leo) with drummer Gary Kendig and guitarist Hugh Dickey (of Richard Bitch), and "Sadhana" (on Saxophonis) with Lucas, as well as Kendig and Dickey. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy and has written hundreds of music and book reviews in various print and on-line journals. Walto recently published "The Perennial Solution Center: Conversations and Readings on Mysticism and the Psychology of Religion" (which is available at Amazon). He lives near Boston with his wife, two daughters, and a cat.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 30/04/2007
Band Members:
Influences: Sun Ra, The Shaggs, Arnold Schoenberg, Scott Walker, Charles Tournemire, Zeena Parkins, Robin Williamson, Captain Beefheart, Skip James, Pierre Boulez, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Iannis Xenakis, Cecil Taylor, Matthjis Vermeulen, AMM, Olivier Messiaen, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Sergei Prokofiev, Charles Wuorinen, Paul Dunmall, Kazimierz Serocki, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Evan Parker, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Gilbert and Sullivan, George Russell, Henry Threadgill, Johannes Brahms, Sunny Murray, Anthony Braxton, Havergal Brian, Alois Hába, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, Earle Brown, Tim Berne, Frederick Delius, Art Lande, Cristóbal Halffter, Simon Fell, Krzysztof Penderecki, Frank Martin, Eigenradio, Othmar Schoeck, Eric Dolphy, Barbara Kolb, Toru Takemitsu, Gabriel Faure, Bhob Rainey, Elisabeth Lutyens, Jimmy Lyons, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Cow, Art Tatum, Roger Reynolds, Celestrial Communication Orchestra, Mat Maneri, Roger Sessions, Charlie Parker, Fred Frith, György Ligeti, Jim Black, Jeff Kaiser, Béla Bartók, Assif Tsahar, Max Reger, Harry Partch, Ran Blake, Fred Lerdahl, Randy Newman, Henry Brant, Paul Rogers, Heinrich Schütz, Joelle Leandre, Carl Ruggles, Anton Bruckner, Episteme, Stefan Wolpe, Borah Bergman, Nurse With Wound, Roscoe Mitchell, Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, Barry Guy, Richard Donovan, Mark Dresser, Terry Riley, Muhal Abrams, Craig Taborn, Morton Feldman. ************************Also: Anthony Trollope, Aldous Huxley, Karen Horney, George Moore, Everett Hall, Gustav Fechner, Richard Hofstadter, Franz Kafka, Samuel Butler, Samuel Beckett, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Baruch Spinoza, George Bernard Shaw, Tom Paine, Rabindranath Tagore, Henry Sidgwick, Virginia Woolf, William James, Joseph Conrad, G.E. Moore, Henry George, Bertrand Russell. ************************* Also: I'm very attracted to compatible couples (like free will and determinism) and have long been not-so-secretly attached to two wildly alluring singles: The Single Tax and The Single, Non-Transferable Ballot.
Sounds Like: More like purgatory than heaven or hell. I used to sound distinctly like limbo until it turned out there was no such thing as limbo. That was a tough day for me.
Record Label: various
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

A Blinking B-

 I didn't care for this book much--certainly not as much as I did the author's previous Tipping Point.  This one seemed no more than a bunch of magazine articles strung together, with no over-arching ...
Posted by on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:58:00 GMT

I Added a Tune to my Profile Today

First time in a long while.  It's called "Inc-Enc" and I hope you enjoy it.W
Posted by on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:41:00 GMT

Everett Hall on Certainty and Sense-Data

The following is taken from his1960 book Philosophical Systems (Univ. of Chicago Press). Sorry in advance both for the funky line returns, which I'm too lazy to edit and for the (no doubt numerous) ty...
Posted by on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:14:00 GMT

Authors for Deserts

As everybody knows, so-called "desert island lists" are fun to make. It strikes me, however, that they really aren't meant for desert islands (where the lists would include books on staying alive and ...
Posted by on Sun, 31 May 2009 13:02:00 GMT

Old McDonald Had an Accident

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BKHvzoKPzQ We're like the Jacksons or the Von Trapps or something, no?
Posted by on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:26:00 GMT

Why a Certain Supposedly Anti-Racist Movie Disturbed Me

  I saw American History X yesterday for the first time. I was bothered by the fact that while lots of arguments for racism are made (rather articulately) by Nazi-esque characters in the the mov...
Posted by on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:33:00 GMT

How Quine Shifted on Ontological Commitment

  In reading some Quine and Quine commentary lately, I noticed a bit of a slide between his view in "On What There Is" (1948) and "Existenceand Quantification" (1966). That movement seems to me ...
Posted by on Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:54:00 GMT

How I Can Muse Further on the Same Subject

  As I wrote above, the more I think about it, focusing on the dereg/rereg issues tends to miss the bigger picture. Also, the idea that this is basically a bail-out for the rich is a little conf...
Posted by on Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:56:00 GMT

Why This Time is No Different From Any of the Others

  It strikes me that there is something like a deregulation/reregulation cycle that it is almost impossible to do anything about. For example, after the Lehman and AIG failures (and the subprime...
Posted by on Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Why New York, New York Is No Better

We were in NYC over the weekend.  Brought two teen nieces from Germany.  Saturday, we went to the Empire State Building.  2 hours in line, 45 minutes on top amid a huge crowd try...
Posted by on Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:15:00 GMT