I was going to play a game of Who Am I and tell a whimsical little biography. At the end, you would have to guess the "bio," but I have yet to meet a horn player on my site. So, I'll just tell you the name of today's subject--it's Jan Vaclav Stich. Stich was born to a serf indentured to Count von Thun in 1746 (near Prague). If he were to write an I Am From exercise, he would be from mud and straw. Von Thun invested heavily in young Stich as a prodigy and had him instructed in the finer subjects of the day--singing, violin, and horn playing. Stich studied with some of the better teachers in Prague and Munich and eventually became a really great horn player. The thing was, he didn't want to play in the service of the Count, who kind of owned him, so he and a band of pals ran away to Italy. The Count was so put out, he sent a posse after Stich with instructions to knock out his front teeth so he could never play the horn again. That would have been worse than kil...