Jump to content

Pip Eastop

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pip Eastop in 2013

Pip Eastop (born 1958)[1] is a virtuoso horn player from London. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1974 to 1976, leaving to take up the position of Principal Horn with the Flanders Philharmonic (now known as the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra). The following year he became Principal Horn of the London Sinfonietta.[2]

Between 1983 and 1986, Eastop trained as a teacher of the Alexander Technique and from 1987 taught this discipline for four years, later incorporating his understanding of the technique into his brass teaching method.[3] He contributed to the chapter on 'Playing, learning and teaching brass' in the Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments.[4]

Eastop was a professor of horn at the Royal Academy of Music from 1993 to 2007 and at the Royal College of Music from 1995 to 2019. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 2000.[5]

In addition to holding principal positions with the London Chamber Orchestra and Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Eastop has been guest principal with all the major London symphony orchestras and smaller groups such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and London Mozart Players.[6] He has also performed extensively with the Aurora Orchestra, including playing the solo part in Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings at Kings Place and Snape Maltings Concert Hall with British tenor Allan Clayton.[7][8]

In 1996, the Arts Council of Great Britain awarded Eastop a research development grant to explore "the possibilities of controlling computer-driven transformation of sound during live, partially improvised performance". This work was undertaken in collaboration with the composer Edward Williams.[9] Eastop's interest in music technology subsequently led him to create his own piece for solo horn and loopstation, Sea Bells, which he premiered at the British Horn Festival in 2011.[10]

His recording of the Mozart horn concertos with Anthony Halstead and the Hanover Band was released in 2015.[11] Reviews of this album praised Eastop's 'refined legato' (Gramophone) and 'cheeky virtuosity' (The Arts Desk), while his cadenzas were described by one reviewer as 'wild and wacky' (Financial Times).[12][13][14] These cadenzas were published in 2024 by Clifton Edition.[15]

Eastop's next recording project was a two-album series of improvisations for horn and organ with Susanne Kujala in the Organo hall of Helsinki Music Centre. Captured live at the first ever Brass @ Sibelius Academy festival in June 2016,[16] this collaboration was an experiment in what Eastop calls "co-composing in realtime, 'writing' not with pen and paper but instead with microphones and digital recording media".[17][18]

He went on to collaborate again with Anthony Halstead for his 2020 album Set the Wild Echoes Flying, a seven-movement work for natural horn and narrator that features four poems and extensive musical allusions from Britten's Serenade.[19][20] This recording has been lauded as 'utterly remarkable' and a 'superhuman achievement' (Classical Explorer).[21]

Eastop retired from playing the horn in 2022 to concentrate on composing and producing.[22] He appears as trumpet/flugelhorn soloist on three tracks from the 2024 album 1325 Ibn Battutah by UK-Middle Eastern band Syriana, and was commissioned by London's Fitzrovia Arts Festival to write a new work for oboe and fixed media that premiered in June 2025.[23][24]

Recordings

[edit]

Publications

[edit]
[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Phillip Eastop | Royal College of Music". www.rcm.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  2. ^ "Pip Eastop". Guild of Hornplayers. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  3. ^ "Pip Eastop". eastop.net. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  4. ^ Dudgeon, Ralph T.; Eastop, Phillip; Herbert, Trevor; Wallace, John (1997), Wallace, John; Herbert, Trevor (eds.), "Playing, learning and teaching brass", The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, Cambridge Companions to Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193–206, ISBN 978-0-521-56522-6, retrieved 15 June 2025
  5. ^ "Honours". Royal Academy of Music. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
  6. ^ "Pip Eastop". Guild of Hornplayers. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  7. ^ "London Serenade". Aurora Orchestra. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  8. ^ "Snape Maltings Serenade". Aurora Orchestra. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  9. ^ The British Horn Society news, 1996
  10. ^ "Sea Bells". Three Worlds Records Ltd. 11 August 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  11. ^ Phillip, Eastop. "Mozart Horn Concertos". Hyperion Records.
  12. ^ "MOZART Horn Concertos Nos 1 - 4. Horn Quintet". Gramophone. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  13. ^ "Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Mozart, Poulenc". theartsdesk.com. 17 January 2015. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  14. ^ Fairman, Richard (23 January 2015). "Mozart: Horn Concertos — review". Financial Times. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  15. ^ "Mozart Horn Concerto Cadenzas by Pip Eastop – Clifton Edition". Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  16. ^ "Home - Brass at Sibelius Academy - Uniarts Sites". sites.uniarts.fi. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  17. ^ "Songs Of A Lost Land volume 1". Three Worlds Records Ltd. 20 September 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  18. ^ "Songs Of A Lost Land volume 2". Three Worlds Records Ltd. 16 August 2019. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  19. ^ "Set The Wild Echoes Flying". Three Worlds Records Ltd. 29 November 2019. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  20. ^ "Pip Eastop". www.editiondb.com. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  21. ^ "Set The Wild Echoes Flying: Pip Eastop's remarkable take on Britten". Classical Explorer. 1 December 2024. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  22. ^ Mortimer, Owen (Autumn 2024). "Pip Eastop on life after the horn". The Horn Player. 21 (2). British Horn Society.
  23. ^ "Syriana 1325 Ibn Battutah, by Syriana". Bernard O Neill. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  24. ^ "Fitzrovia Arts Festival 2025". The Fitzrovia News. 4 June 2025. Retrieved 15 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pip_Eastop&oldid=1299643257"