25 years ago this month. I played my last session in Nashville, not long before moving to Potsdam to start a new career teaching full time at the college level. I was at that time leaving my position as Third Horn in the Nashville Symphony, and as a part of being that level of player in town I would typically play a session or two a month and, in the summer, often several sessions a week. It was a good form of additional income and variety in my playing.

That last session was a great one to go out on, as it was a session related to a widely released, 1997 Fox Animation Studios film, Anastasia. Most of the music for it had been recorded in Hollywood, but some situation came up where they needed to fill in the song Once upon a December with a new scoring session (more on the song here, it has a dedicated Wikipedia page).

The film was released that November, so this was an important thing that they spent some real $ on to get right! There were at least four horns on the session, and memory says maybe six. It was at what I recall was referred to as the Alamo studio, in the former Tony Alamo church, but officially it was then and is now still known as the Ocean Way studio.

Looking around on Youtube, the finished result is below! I know my sound is in the mix somewhere, you can certainly hear the horns. I’ve never watched the movie but hearing it now, it is a great memory of a former life. Since leaving Nashville, I’ve played less than a dozen commercial recording sessions, and I am glad I had the opportunity to play a good number of them when I was there.