Paul Horn

Paul Horn’s artistic path falls into two distinct eras separated by 1967. Before that date he worked as a first-rate cool-toned alto saxophonist and flutist; afterward he concentrated on new-age flute music frequently intended as a backdrop for meditation. He began piano lessons at four and took up alto saxophone at twelve. A spell on tenor with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra preceded his 1956–1958 tenure in the Chico Hamilton Quintet, where he succeeded Buddy Collette on alto, flute, and clarinet. Settling into studio work in Los Angeles, he nevertheless found time between 1957 and 1966 to record cool-jazz dates for Dot (later reissued on Impulse), World Pacific, Hi Fi Jazz, Columbia, and RCA, and he joined Cal Tjader for a memorable 1959 live recording. In 1964 he produced one of the first Jazz Masses, scored for orchestra by Lalo Schifrin.

The second chapter opened in 1967 when Horn traveled to India to study transcendental meditation and subsequently became a teacher. The following year he taped unaccompanied flute solos inside the Taj Mahal, relishing the building’s natural reverberations; later projects included sessions in the Great Pyramid, a 1979 tour of China, appearances in the Soviet Union, recordings that used killer-whale sounds as accompaniment, and the founding of his own Golden Flute label.