John Milner is the retired 3rd horn of the Montreal Symphony. In his retirement, he’s been recording all of the horn parts (and even some drum parts!) to the Fripperies and a few of his own arrangements. Keep up the inspiring work, John!

About the Fripperies, he wrote:

I developed my sense of style for the Fripperies playing them on the street in New York as a student back in the 70’s.  We made a living one summer playing horn quartets on the street, in competition with traffic and crowd noise, so the style had to be pretty punchy and as dramatic as possible, to attract attention ! Normally we played 4 - 5 nights per week from about 7:00 to 10:30 or 11:00, on 5th Ave at 54th street.  It was a shoe store with a recessed display window that made a perfect little stage with pretty good acoustics that projected the sound out into the street. We put a horn case out in front, and we didn’t look at it as begging, but rather that we were putting on our own little concerts.  One night we looked up and there was James Chambers - at that time the personnel manager of the NY Philharmonic - standing there listening.  Another night, just as the concerts let out, there was the entire trombone section of the Chicago Symphony standing there.  On a good night we would get $35 - $40 each player, and it really built up the endurance - 3 or 4 hours of quartets !  Imagine the feeling about 10:30 at night when your chops are already dead from 3 hours of playing, and here comes, down the street, a wealthy looking crowd coming out of the Broadway shows !  We would say “ quick, Fripperie # 6 ! “ , which is, in my opinion, the greatest of the Fripperies.