In recent years, Bill, now 89, has teamed up with his son, Mark Nemoyten, to present The HornMEN Show.
Background
The Hornmen are father and son, Bill and Mark Nemoyten. Bill has been performing his Hornman show for over twenty years in hundreds of venues such as schools, libraries and retirement homes. He has also performed at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose. Bill is a professional musician with Bachelor and Master Degrees in music education. Mark Nemoyten is a professional trumpet player and has held the principal trumpet chair in San Francisco’s world famous Golden Gate Park Band for fifteen years. He has taught music for several years and has degrees in both performance and music education from San Francisco State University and has performed with Bill as the “Hornmen” for the past two years in several locations in the Bay Area. As a member of the Napa Valley Symphony, Mark has accompanied several world famous artists and is an accomplished player of symphony orchestra, concert band, jazz and rock band music.
Synopsis
The Hornmen will be sharing their knowledge and expertise in performing on “Sixteen Horns from Around the World.” They utilize story-telling, humor, costuming and audience participation devices to get and hold the attention of their audiences. Also, the display of sixteen instruments is very eye-catching.
Program Objectives
Among the several objectives are the following; to provide an entertaining and educational experience in which the students will see and hear certain unusual instruments for the first time and also get to hear fine professional playing of familiar instruments. Hopefully the students will become better at identifying the looks and sounds of a variety of instruments and may become inspired to learn to play instruments.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary will mainly be the names of the instruments, their countries of origin and the names of the pieces performed. Longer, more complex words and names are eliminated from programs for the primary grades.
Connections to Curriculum
Math and Science are demonstrated by how instruments that are smaller play higher notes and longer instruments player lower notes. Example: Trombones are twice as long as trumpets and tubas are twice as long as trombones. We also explain how brass instruments are played by vibration from the lips. History is brought in by showing how horns looked and sounded hundreds of years ago and how they developed over time. Cultural elements are present in primitive instruments such as the dijeridu from the aboriginal people of Australia, the Tibetan horn and the Swiss Alphorn. Reading is encouraged when performing in libraries and schools. We encourage the children to find and read books about music and musicians. One example of Visual Arts is that we show the unique pointillist style of art of the Australian Aborigines on our dijeridu. Musical Arts are addressed by the variety of the music performed which includes conch shell calls, Jewish ritual melodies on the Shofar, bugle calls, classical music, circus music, sing-along pieces, jazz and children’s songs.