David Cooper (host)

Like, you know, she wore size four kids shoes.

She used to buy her shoes at like Stride right in the mall, you know, like... Was music a way to kind of connect with your family and feel like you had a sense of community growing up?

Oh, you know, I think more than that, it was just my mom had an enthusiasm about Costco music and enthusiasm for horn.

And so whenever she would hear the horn on the radio station, she'd be like, hey, listen to my horn, the horn.

And like, as soon as I was old enough to kind of be like, hey, what do you mean the horn?

Like...

Oh, yeah, the horn.

And as soon as I understood what sound the horn made, I was like, that is the greatest sound in the orchestra.

I'm going to play that.

And I remember from second grade, I was like, so this must have been pre-second grade.

I must have been, I don't know, five, six, seven, somewhere in there.

And then in second grade, there was a Christmas tree that had a French horn ornament, like an actual kind of like hunting horn kind of deal, like in the farmer's market near our house.

And so I bought this little tube with like a little tiny mouthpiece soldered onto it that I would go around making sounds on.

You know that solder has lead in it, but keep going.

Yeah, but anyway, so yeah, that was my first experience making a sound on a French horn.

It was, you know, just kind of like a Christmas ornament toy.

But then my brother played trumpet.

And as soon as I was old enough, I got a French horn.

And the first sound I made on the horn was at my grandma's house.

I went over to her house, she cleaned up a mouthpiece where she polished it up and she put it in the horn and I made my first sound and I was just like, this is awesome.