Derrick Horne's career as a performer, producer, recording engineer and session musician spans well over three decades with performances on over 600 publicly available recordings. With clients ranging from George Clinton to the Olympics and Joel Osteen, his reach as a first-call multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and recording artist has allowed him to contribute to a wide variety of productions, including pop, R&B, world music, gospel, country and chamber music. This has resulted in contributions to several award-nominated projects.
Horne completed masters of music degrees in both composition and in theory pedagogy at Southern Methodist University, where he also graduated summa cum laude with his undergraduate degree in music composition. His instructors include Robert Frank, Kevin Hanlon, Jack Delaney, Akira Sato and Lane Harder. One of his main objectives as a composer is to fuse modern popular music styles with traditional classical ensembles. This is evident in his Fanfare for Brass Quintet; Minuet and Trio for Wind Quintet and Frantic for string quartet. In 2014 his guitar orchestra piece Quintango won the Austin Classical Guitar Society's composition contest. His pieces for jazz ensemble include Umbigada and Got the Hot Sauce. He recently premiered Color Fusion for electric guitar and wind ensemble.
Horne, based in Dallas, Texas, is a voting member of NARAS and author of the book How to Take Your Home Studio Worldwide (Yokebreaker 2014) and String Fingers Accompaniment Track. He also runs Yokebreaker Productions, which provides a wide range of entertainment services including music production, audio/visual consultation and project management. He is endorsed by Ernie Ball Strings, Orange Amps, Hammond Organs, Pavel Musical Instruments and Ed Lynch Custom Guitars. He is currently a faculty member at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, where he teaches music theory and music industry-related classes as well as conducts the Meadows Jazz Orchestra.