Andrew and guest co-host Nicole Cash are joined by horn legend Gail Williams, retired Associate Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Professor Emerita at Northwestern University
Why Gail will never write a memoir
Her post-retirement obsession with photography and the promise she made to her late teacher, John Covert, that has her flying halfway around the world
Doug Hill's line "don't be a should-er" and how it lands for Andrew in the practice room too
The lessons she learned from John Covert (her very first teacher) and why they stick with her to this day
Why she believes handing young players orchestral excerpts too early does real damage
Growing up on a dairy farm, playing horn for the cows, and the discovery she and her brother made about echo inside a 70-foot silo
How her mother, a K-12 vocal music teacher, shaped a teaching philosophy Gail still uses today, one Nicole remembers learning from her firsthand
Her go-to trick for teaching embouchure to students who insist they "can't"
The interaction that Gail had with Andrew's 11-year-old son at the International Horn Symposium that sums up her kindness and thoughtfulness
Attending her very first horn workshop at 18, her jaw on the floor meeting legends like Barry Tuckwell, and why she misses the format those workshops used to have
Why she left the CSO after 20 years: the tension between touring life and raising two teenagers, with her husband still playing Principal Clarinet in the orchestra
The Phil Farkas line that stuck with her for decades and altered the course of her career
What she actually misses about orchestral life, and what she very much doesn't
Playing in the Lyric Opera pit for Pavarotti and Domingo, which she calls her real "post-grad degree"
Posting her CSO resignation letter the same week she was set to solo with the orchestra, and how unkindly some colleagues responded
Being the one who leaves the orchestra and not her husband, and the "peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the car" reality of motherhood in a male-dominated field
Borrowing a concept from photography to teach horn students about balance
Why "change is healthy" is her guiding phrase, and how it connects to Seth Godin's idea of "tension"
Her Northwestern send-off: an 80-person horn choir spanning every class she ever taught, and two straight nights of backyard bonfires
Asking her own former student and successor at Northwestern, Adam Unsworth, what he didn't get from her as a teacher
Studying with Arnold Jacobs, and how his teaching gradually boiled down to one simple instruction
Applying to college as a phys ed major to avoid the family business of music, and why she still coaches horn playing like an athletic skill
A phrase of the late Sam Pilafian's that comes up more than once in this conversation
Why two different mentors, Covert and Farkas, independently pointed her toward Chicago
Nicole's second act as a decorated audiobook narrator, and the phone call from an old Dallas Symphony colleague that got her started
Andrew's take on why AI could never replicate what happens in the moment for musicians
Gail's blunt take on AI in the classroom, and the picture book about butterflies her granddaughter chose over a graphic novel
The scales question her old teacher used to ask her, and the twist she still applies to her own practice
The story of Gail "fixing" an emergency before Mallory Thompson's wedding (when Tim Higgins got COVID), and the surprise Empire Brass connection it turned up for Andrew
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