"The Horn in Song." Tod Bowermaster, horn; James Howsmon, piano. (Available at the Powell Symphony Hall boutique, Amazon.com, CDBaby.com, iTunes.)

Another member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has produced a solo CD: SLSO third horn Tod Bowermaster's "The Horn in Song" is now available.

The contents are exactly what the title promises: 23 works — transcriptions of great art songs — performed on French horn. Bowermaster plays with a consistently beautiful, singing tone that conveys the deeper meanings of the songs as well as their music.

"What I've hoped is that it's something people will enjoy listening to, plain and simple," Bowermaster says.

Bowermaster, an accomplished soprano in his childhood, considered the project for a long time before finally taking it on.

"I grew up singing before I played the horn," he says. "I've always enjoyed the lyrical aspect of it. Years ago, my wife, Cynthia, was after me to record lullabies for our kids, but I never had time. Our kids aren't babies now — they're 10 and 12 — but I thought this was the time to finally do this."

Bowermaster was encouraged and assisted by two old friends. Paul Eachus, a former colleague in the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, is the head recording engineer at Oberlin College; pianist James Howsmon, Bowermaster's roommate at Northwestern University, is the head of accompanying at Oberlin. What's more, Oberlin has a new state-of-the-art recording studio.

Howsmon introduced Bowermaster to song literature when they were at Northwestern.

"He was always studying scores, accompanying voice students," Bowermaster says of Howsmon.

As it happened, he was available.

Next came the process of choosing and transcribing songs so that they could be played on the horn.

One of Bowermaster's favorite CDs is soprano Arleen Auger's "Love Songs"; he realized that many of her choices might work.

"As it turns out, all eight of the transcriptions I did on the CD came from that," he says.

He enlisted pianist Nancy Mayo of Webster University to help him hunt down the music; they read through it together to find keys that would work.

"Fortunately, art songs are usually available in different registers, in high voice and low voice," Bowermaster says.

Some of them were easier than others, but "I fell in love with them, and we kept them all."

To prevent too much sameness, Bowermaster chose songs from a wide range of composers, eras and countries. Only one, a Spanish folksong setting by Fernando Obradors, wasn't available in a workable key.

"Fortunately," he says, "Jim is a great pianist, and he was able to transpose it."

Bowermaster says, "To have the opportunity to study the texts (instrumentalists) don't normally get that bonus that singers do. At its best, the text really informs the music. That was a real gift for me. It's been a labor of love the whole way."