Danny Katzen, the Hornist Rejected 48 Times by Boston, Dies at 75

Danny Katzen, the hornist who reportedly auditioned 48 times before winning the second horn chair at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died at 75.

The news of his death was announced by Slippedisc, which chronicled his improbable career in a post titled "Boston's famous reject has died." The label stuck for good reason. Katzen auditioned 48 times for the second horn position before the orchestra finally hired him in 1979. He stayed for 29 years, retiring in 2008.

Persistence, in his case, paid a salary.

What did those 29 years include?

Katzen's résumé carries weight beyond the audition lore. He performed in Leonard Bernstein's final lifetime concert at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's summer home in the Berkshires. That single engagement places him on stage for a genuine endpoint in American music history.

His recorded legacy is arguably larger than his live one. Katzen appears on most of the Boston Pops' celebrated recordings, the ensemble's catalogue spanning decades of American orchestral pops repertoire. Film listeners have heard him too, whether they know it or not: he played on John Williams's soundtrack for Schindler's List (1993).

One hornist, in short, sits inside three distinct chapters of American music — Bernstein, the Pops, and Williams — after needing 48 attempts to get in the door.

What did Katzen say about orchestral competition?

He kept a clear-eyed view of how his profession had changed. Katzen once said: "There would be maybe 50 other horn players vying for a place in an orchestra in my time; there are easily five times the number of competitors now for that one chair."

The arithmetic is stark. Fifty competitors per seat in his era; roughly 250 today, by his own estimate, chasing the same single position. His 48 rejections look almost reasonable against those odds — and almost heroic against the odds he actually faced in 1979.

His comment now reads as a quiet warning to conservatory students. The chair he eventually won has not become easier to win. It has become harder, by a factor he put at five.

Why does the "reject" story matter?

The audition saga has entered orchestral folklore because it inverts the usual narrative. Musicians typically frame rejection as the end of a career. Katzen treated it, 48 times over, as a scheduling matter.

He joined in 1979, played under some of the most recorded ensembles in American classical music, and left in 2008 with a discography most hornists would envy. The Bernstein concert alone secures his footnote. The Schindler's List soundtrack guarantees that millions who never attended Symphony Hall have heard his section's sound.

Katzen's death closes a story that orchestral musicians have told each other for decades — the proof that the 48th attempt can be the one that counts, in a profession where the fifth attempt already marks most players as hopeless.