Paul Horn (jazz musician)

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This is an article about the jazz musician Paul Horn. For information on the computer scientist Dr. Paul Horn, see Paul Horn (computer scientist).

Paul Horn (born March 17, 1930) is an American jazz flutist, and leader of the Paul Horn Quintet.

He was born in New York City, and began playing the piano at the age of 4 and the saxophone when he was 12. He studied the flute in 1952 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and then earned a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He played with Chico Hamilton's Quintet from 1956 to 1958. He worked with Tony Bennett in 1966. In 1970, he moved with his wife Tryntje to Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. He formed his own quintet and has recorded film scores for the National Film Board of Canada.

He is widely known for his innovations on both metal and traditional wood flutes, and has recorded some truly exotic albums. Perhaps most famous of these are his "inside" recordings, which feature airy, echoing sounds created in the Taj Mahal, and later, within the walls of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Horn was the first westerner to be granted permission to perform inside the latter, a massive structure considered the spiritual nexus of Tibetan Buddhism. Horn has since made similar recordings in a pyramid, a cathedral and with Orca whales. While he is undoubtedly a jazz musician, many of his works defy categorization.