A high note at K 2016

 The world's largest plastics machinery trade show is not where you'd expect to find an alphorn.

The traditional instrument of Switzerland is typically carved from wood. You picture them in the mountains, or in those earworm ads for Ricola cough drops.

So why did an Italian manufacturer of plastics processing equipment bring an alphorn to K 2016?

The alphorn in question is made from a decidedly modern material — carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy. A studio in Switzerland developed a way to manufacture the horns using high pressure resin transfer molding. Cannon SpA brought the instrument, along with Italy-based musician Martin Mayes, as a demonstration of the possibilities of plastics.

The trouble with plastic instruments, often promoted as a low-cost introduction to music, is that the sound dies in the material, Mayes says. A plastic trumpet will never sound the same as a brass one.

But he says the carbon composite horn plays as well as the ones that started life as a tree. The material resonates in a way that plastic usually doesn't. He thinks it has something to do with the way the carbon fibers are woven, and I'm not in a position to argue.

Of course, this plastic instrument is hardly low-cost. The manufacturer's website lists the horns at 3,700 Swiss Francs, or about $3,800. You won't be buying these for a classroom of schoolchildren.

The carbon alphorn is collapsible for easy transport, and lightweight — Mayes is able to lift the instrument above his head and swing it through the audience during performances.

And though I can't match his skills, Mayes did generously allow me — a French horn player and unapologetic fan of 11-foot conical instruments — to try out the alphorn.

But not until after we'd had risotto and a glass of something bubbly — “For courage,” insisted Cannon's Max Taverna – that somehow seemed to never be less than half full.