- Local every day in
JP Music
Jamaica Plain Horn Player and Repair Expert Enjoys Wide Range of Gigs
Ken Pope fixes French horns by day, and plays them at night.
When Ken Pope turned 10 it was time for him to pick an instrument to play. His choice was trumpet. But his mom, at one time an accordion teacher, said, “No, everybody needs a French horn or an oboe or a bassoon.” He went for the horn because, as he now says, “It was closest to the trumpet.” But Pope, 50, who went on to be a horn performance major at Oberlin, doesn’t only play the beautiful and stately member of the brass family, he also fixes them. The basement space beneath his home in the Forest Hills area of Jamaica Plain, is also the home of Pope Instrument Repair, which he opened in 1989. Why is it called a French horn? The actual term is just the horn. Nobody really knows why it’s called French horn. Was it always classical music…
In this Article:
