Contributing Artists

Staff Sergeant Selena Adams hails from Nicholson, Georgia. Prior to joining The U.S. Army Field Band, she was a band director at Loveland High School in Loveland, Colorado and Spartanburg High School in Spartanburg, South Carolina. SSG Adams was a member of the 2008 Japan Touring Cast of Music Motion Theater's Odyssey. She participated in the National Repertory Orchestra, Orford Summer Music Academy, and Hot Springs Summer Music Festivals and has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, ProMusica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Spartanburg Symphony Orchestra, and numerous regional ensembles. She is a member of the Pentagon Winds and teaches on the brass staff for the Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps.  SSG Adams earned her Bachelor of Music Education degree at Furman University, her Master of Music degree at Indiana University, and is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her teachers include Michael Thornton, Richard Seraphinoff, and Gayle Chesebro.

ARC trio
Stephanie Stetson, horn
Jeanne Skrocki, violin
Hannah Yi, piano

Bruce Atwell, Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, holds principal horn positions with the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, the Green Bay Symphony, the Fox Valley Symphony, and the Oshkosh Symphony. He has performed with the Florida Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and as Acting Fourth Horn with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also performed with orchestras throughout the United States and is active as a soloist and chamber musician. Atwell is on the faculty at the Lutheran Summer Music Academy where he plays with the Praetorius Brass and Movere Wind Quintet. His recording Baroque Music for Horn and Strings with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic was recently released on the Centaur label. 

A native of West Dundee, IL, Sarah Bach began her formal musical training in Rochester, NY at the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Verne Reynolds and Peter Kurau.  After graduation she moved to Miami Beach, FL to join the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.  During her three year tenure with the orchestra she toured extensively throughout Europe and North America, recorded on the RCA Victor Label, and was an active participant in the orchestra’s community outreach program.  Sarah received her master’s degree from Rice University where she studied with William VerMeulen.  While in Houston, Sarah performed regularly with the Houston, San Antonio and Kansas City Symphonies as well as the Houston Grand Opera.  Since moving to Los Angeles, Sarah has enjoyed an active freelance career.  She is Principal Horn of the Riverside Philharmonic, Third Horn in the Santa Barbara Symphony, a member of the Crown City Brass Quintet and performs regularly with the Pacific, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego Symphonies.  In addition to being on the faculty at Glendale Community College, Sarah teaches at the Laurel Hall School.  She lives in Burbank with her husband Damon and their sons Lincoln and Lewis.​

It started when he was a teenager. Scott Bacon, owner of Siegfried's Call, played with RC cars. He would build the high performance kit cars and race them at local tracks. The out of box cars were never fast enough, so he customized his cars using high performance upgrades such as oil filled shocks, adjustable spring tensioners, ball bearings, electronics, etc. Little did he know that the skills developed then, working with small parts, would be the foundation for attention to detail and hand work later in life.

After graduating from Boston University with a Master of Music, Mr. Bacon accepted a job to work at Rayburn music in Boston. Here, he worked with many horn players and started to dabble with customizing horns. With the help of a gigging buddy, Sam Minnich, who filled a void in the repair shop of Rayburn Music, the 2 started a project to change a standard Conn 10D and 11D horn into a horn immediately accepted by professionals in the Boston Pops. They named the horn the SB1.

As a growing number of players brought requests to him, Mr. Bacon realized that he needed training in order to better understand the true nature of how horns were built. In the spring of 2003, he left Boston to realize that dream after accepting a job offer from Master Craftsman Dietmar Duerk in Germany. Mr. Bacon worked closely with Herr Duerk whose major duties were to manage the music store, handle repair work, check quality end control of the horn production, final horn assembly, global marketing and sales. During this time, Mr. Bacon learned how tubing was properly drawn, bent, filed, sanded and polished. He fit valves that needed special attention, soldered tubing, removed dents, and worked at some point in every stage of a horn's development. He helped on various occasions with some lathe work, and learned that a great horn maker spends as much time creating his own tools for a job as he does manufacturing an instrument. As the German language strengthened, he realized an original 5 year plan was no longer necessary, and after spending 3 1/2 years with DuerkHorns, decided to move back to New York to start his own company with his wife, Andrea Bacon. October of 2006 Siegfried's Call was born.

Mr. Bacon continues to educate himself with regards to repair and customization. Close relationships with German Master Craftsman, membership in NAPBIRT, attending clinics offered by respected men in our field, and consulting on a regular basis with other repair men of "horn", his dedication to achieving the best possible results for the customer remain in the forefront.

Staff Sergeant Rebecca Bainbridge is a native of Edina, Minnesota.  She joined The U.S.  Army Field Band in 2014 after playing with the 323rd Army Band "Fort Sam's Own". Prior to joining the Army, SSG Bainbridge was an active freelancer in Colorado performing with the Colorado Symphony, Boulder Philharmonic, Greeley Philharmonic and various other small groups throughout the Front Range. She has participated in various music festivals around the world including the Tuscia Opera Festival in Italy, Burgos Chamber Music Festival in Spain, Chautauqua Music Festival, and Crested Butte Music Festival. SSG Bainbridge attended school at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Manhattan School of Music. Her primary teachers include Michael Thornton and Michelle Baker. When not performing, she enjoys yoga, weightlifting, cooking and spending time with her family.

Dr. Alison Balbag is an accomplished harpist, educator, and academic. Known for her engaging artistry and versatility, Balbag has performed as soloist with the California Chamber Orchestra and USC Thornton Chamber Orchestra. She has won first place in several American String Teachers Association solo competitions and has also performed with numerous orchestras, including San Diego Symphony and Eugene Symphony. Equally at home in diverse genres, she has performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Itzhak Perlman, Burt Bacharach, Natalie Cole, Nancy Wilson, Josh Groban, and Pink Martini. She holds several film music credits, and her on-screen television performances include PBS’s Great Performances, FOX’s Glee, and ABC’s Modern Family.

Balbag holds doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees in harp performance from the USC Thornton School of Music. An innovative educator, she is an LA Phil Teaching Artist and a curriculum writer and developer for the LA Phil and the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

An interdisciplinary academic, Dr. Balbag is a PhD candidate at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Her research investigates music’s influence on health and development at all ages across the lifespan. Her music background grants her a unique insight into music’s effects on the brain and aging processes. She regularly presents her research at academic conferences internationally, and her work has been published in International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Additionally, she serves as Co-Director of Wellness at The Colburn School.

Ion Balu, M.M., a native of Romania, received his Masters Degree in Musical Styles and Interpretation from G. Dima Music Academy, Cluj-Napoca, in 1997. As a student, Mr. Balu played with the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca for nine years and concertized extensively throughout Europe. He won all but one of the national Horn competitions in which he participated from 1986 to 1989.  As a sixth grader, he was the youngest horn player in Romanian history to be featured as a soloist with an orchestra. While a student at the Music Academy, he was a featured soloist with the Romanian National Opera in 1994 & 1996. While playing in RNO, Mr. Balu was actively invited to play with various orchestras around the country.  In 1999, Mr. Balu came to the USA as a graduate student. While working on his second Masters degree in Horn Performance at Arkansas State University, he was a featured soloist with the NE Arkansas Symphony. He played with the Symphonies of Arkansas, Baton Rouge, Tupelo, Greenville, and NE Arkansas, etc. In 2002, he won a position with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and he has been part of the MSO until 11/11/11, when he resigned his position to dedicate himself exclusively to his business. Ion  enjoys mixed martial arts and traveling. He has three cats: Chloe, DooDoo cat and MagnifiCAT, a.k.a. Lord Fluffy Mc.Flufferton.

Steven Becknell is currently principal horn of the Los Angeles Opera. He was a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for eight years and has performed with many of the orchestras in the Southern California area, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Active in the Hollywood recording studios, he has played on over a thousand different motion pictures and television shows, and has recorded with such legendary recording artists as Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, Barry Manilow, and Josh Groban. As a chamber musician, Becknell has been the principal horn with the Santa Barbara-based Camerata Pacifica for many years, and has performed at both the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Mainly Mozart Festival.

Becknell comes from a musical family; both his parents were professional musicians. He began playing piano at age five and took up the horn by age 12. He earned a Bachelor of Music from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Music from the USC Thornton School of Music, where he studied under Vince DeRosa.

Naturally from São João del Rei / MG - Brazil, Celso Benedito began his musical studies at age seven, at the Teodoro de Faria wind ensemble, under the guidance of Tadeu Nicolaau Rodrigues. On the horn, he studied with Zdenek Svab, Daniel Havens and Michael Alpert. Celso lived in São Paulo from 1991 to 2007, when he played in many orchestras like the “Orquestra Experimental de Repertório”, the “Orquestra Jazz Sifônica”, etc. In 1996, he won a scholarship to study at the Salford University and at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2005 Celso finish his master degree at the São Paulo State University.

Playing the natural horn Celso played many concerts with groups like “Engenho Barroco”, “Américantiga”, “Harmoniemusik”, etc. In 2007 he moved to Salvador to teach at the Federal University, where he concluded his doctoral degree in music education under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Joel Barbosa. Since then, he continued his work as horn professor of the Bahia Federal University and has been playing and giving masterclasses in many Brazilian musical centers.

Dr. Travis Bennett joined the faculty of Western Carolina University in 2006, where he teaches lessons in the horn studio, conducts the Horn Choir, coaches chamber music ensembles, and teaches Music Appreciation. 

In addition to his teaching activities, Dr. Bennett maintains an active performing schedule, playing more than 50 concerts a year in orchestral, chamber, and recital settings. He has performed with orchestras throughout the southeast, including the Asheville (NC), Greenville (SC), Macon (GA), Columbus (GA), Tuscaloosa (AL), Huntsville (AL), and Tallahassee (FL) Symphony Orchestras. As a member of the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet (www.smbq.org), he made his Carnegie Hall debut in June 2007, and has played concert tours in China, Germany, the Czech Republic and Jamaica. In February of 2010, he was a guest performer and teacher at Isla Verde Bronces, an international brass festival held in Córdoba, Argentina.

He is married to his high school sweetheart, Julie, and they have two sons, Tyler and Preston.

Gene P. Berger is the Assistant Professor of Horn at Ball State University and member of the Musical Arts Woodwind Quintet and DaCamera Brass Quintet. In addition to his teaching position, Mr. Berger is the Principal Horn with Muncie Symphony Orchestra, Southwest Florida Symphony, where he has been a featured soloist, and a member of Traverse Symphony. Prior to his appointment at Ball State University in 2010, Mr. Berger was a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, and The Florida Orchestra. He can be heard on numerous recordings with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra conducted by Erich Kunzel and Grammy-winning recordings of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Paavo Järvi. Mr. Berger has been an active educator, formerly teaching at the Interlochen Arts Academy, University of Central Florida and the University of Tampa. He has presented master classes, lectures, educational recitals and hosted clinics throughout North America. In the summers, Mr. Berger has taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp, and has made performanceappearances with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Colorado Music Festival, Music in the Mountains, The Spoleto Festival and the AIMS Festival in Graz, Austria. Mr. Berger received his Masters of Music from Southern Methodist University and his Bachelor of Music from Florida State University. His principal teachers were Gregory Hustis, Principal Horn of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Dr. William Capps, former Principal Horn of the Berlin Radio Orchestra and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and Frederick Schmitt, charter member of the New York Brass Quintet.

Abigail Black is from the northern suburbs of Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Music in Horn Performance with a Performer’s Certificate, studying horn under Professor W. Peter Kurau, at the Eastman School of Music. Currently, she is completing her Music Education studies in a fifth year at Eastman. This summer, Abigail is attending the Chautauqua Institute and working as an assistant with the Eastman Concert Office. Previously, she attended the National Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, and Kendall Betts Horn Camp. Abigail has performed with ensembles such as Eastman Philharmonia, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Empire Film Music Ensemble, Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra, National Music Festival Orchestra, Brevard Festival Orchestra, and Brevard Sinfonia. Through her work in these orchestras, she received the great opportunity to collaborate with renowned artists, such as André Previn, Peter Serkin, Jeff Beal, Irvine Arditti, and JoAnn Falletta.

Abigail has been the recipient of many accolades and awards, including the collegiate Kendall Betts Horn Camp Scholarship, the Howard Hanson Scholarship and the John Philip Sousa Award. She has played in masterclasses for William VerMeulen, Jacek Muzyk, Oto Carillo, Bryan Kennedy, and Corbin Wagner. Additionally, Abigail has worked with artists Jennifer Burch, Derek Conrod, Jonathan Boen, Hazel Dean Davis and Lowell Greer. 

From Adams to Mozart and Britten to Wagner, Erika Binsley is an enthusiastic performer of music old and new. As an orchestral, chamber and solo musician, she has performed in numerous locations around the world, including Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, New World Center, and Shanghai Concert Hall.

Currently, Erika is a freelance hornist in the Washington D.C. area and doctoral student at the University of Maryland. Prior to moving to the east coast, she was a member of the Wichita Symphony and Lieurance Woodwind Quintet, while earning her Master's of Music degree from Wichita State University. As an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, Erika was a member of the YMF Debut Orchestra, which toured seven cities across China in 2011.

During the summers, Erika has participated in the Aspen Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, Banff Summer Festival, CCM Spoleto Festival (in Italy), Kendall Betts' Horn Camp, and Idyllwild Summer Festival Orchestra.

She has received many awards, including the ASCAP Livingston and Evans Scholarship, Low Horn Winner in the IHS Dorothy Frizelle Orchestra Audition Contest, Koch Cultural Trust Enabling Grant, Ollie J. Heskett Fellowship, and a Trustee Scholarship (full tuition) to the University of Southern California.

Erika currently studies with Gregory Miller at UMD. Her past teachers include: Nicholas Smith, Kristy Morrell, James Thatcher, Steven Gross, Louise MacGillivray, Kendall Betts, and William VerMeulen.

When Erika is not playing her horn, she works as a graduate assistant at one of UMD's computer help desks.

Amparo Edo Biol is a horn player native from Valencia (Spain), based in Los Angeles (CA), working as a freelance musician and composer in the entertainment industry. She is a graduate with the highest honors from the "Joaquin Rodrigo" Conservatory of Music in Valencia and a Summa Cum Laude graduate from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA thanks to a full-ride scholarship from SGAE (Spain). She studied regularly with Manuel Jarrega, Miguel Torres and Maria Rubio attending several master-classes and courses with Andrew Bain, Stefan de Leval Jezierski, Richard "Gus" Sebring, Javier Bonet and Will Sanders. 

As a french horn player she performed with American Youth Symphony, Young Musicians Foundation, Philharmonic Orchestra of Valencia University, Youth Orchestra of Valencia, Brookline Symphony Orchestra, Mediterranean Symphony Orchestra and Video Game Orchestra in prestigious concert halls like Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston, Walt Disney Concert Hall and Royce Hall in LA, Palau de la Musica and Palau de les Arts in Valencia (Spain) among many others.

She has collaborated with renowned international artists such as Wayne Shorter, John Patitucci, Joe Lovano, Krill Gerstein, Phil Wilson, Terri-Lyne Carrington, Miles Evans, Alan Silvestri, Joan Manuel Serrat, Joaquin Sabina and in the Grammy-nominated album "Providencia" by Danilo Perez.

Besides playing french horn, Amparo keeps an active career as a composer and orchestrator both in the concert and the recording stage. Her award-wining catalogue includes music for horn, as well as chamber and symphonic works.

James Boldin maintains a diverse career as an educator and performer. He is a member of the faculty in the School of Visual and Performing Arts at The University of Louisiana at Monroe. He has performed at the 44th and 45th International Horn Symposiums, and at numerous regional horn workshops. He has also presented clinics at the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference, the Louisiana Music Educators Association State Convention, and the South Central Regional Music Conference. An active orchestral musician, Boldinholds positions with the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Rapides Symphony Orchestra, and Monroe Symphony Orchestra. His debut solo recording, Jan Koetsier: Music for Horn, was released in 2013 on the MSR Classics Label, and has been critically praised for “superb playing…on an extraordinarily high level of both technique and communicative abilities.” (Fanfare Magazine). His articles have been published in The Instrumentalist Magazine and The Horn Call: The Journal of the International Horn Society, and his musical arrangements have been published by Cimarron Music Press, the International Horn Society, and Stainer & Bell, Ltd. \Boldin is a member of The College Music Society, The National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors, and The International Horn Society, and currently serves as IHS area representative for the state of Louisiana. Boldin earned the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Appalachian State University.

Lisa O. Bontrager has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S., Europe, Brazil, Paraguay and Japan, including tours with the versatile Millennium Brass, and MirrorImage, a horn duo with Michelle Stebleton and the Pennsylvania Quintet. Featured artist at the 2007 Southeast Horn Workshop, the 2010 International Women’s Brass Conference in Toronto, Bontrager was recently featured artist at the Western US Horn Symposium in Las Vegas, the Western Illinois Horn Workshop and the 31st Oficinate Musica De Crutiba, Brazil in 2013.

Recognized for her teaching, Lisa has presented masterclasses throughout the world and is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at Penn State University where she received the 2008 Faculty Scholar Medal for the Arts and Humanities. Currently, she serves as principal horn of the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra and Music at Penn’s Woods, and as Tenor Hornist of the Brass Band of Battle Creek and has recently performed with the Baltimore, Harrisburg and Altoona Symphonies.  

Bontrager serves as an elected member of the Advisory Council of the International Horn Society. She appears on nearly 20 recordings, including her solo CD, “Hunter’s Moon,” released on the Summit label. Lisa holds performance degrees from the University of Michigan where she studied with Louis Stout.

Laura Brenes is a native Californian, born and raised in Yorba Linda, just 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. She began her musical training on the piano, and began studying the Horn at the age of 9. Her advanced education began at Brigham Young University where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Musicperformance. After that, Mrs. Brenes attended the University of Southern California on scholarship where she received her Master’s Degree in Music Performance while in the studio of Vincent DeRosa.

Laura Brenes is an active freelance musician in the Los Angeles area. She is currently Principal Horn for the Redlands Symphony Orchestra and Third Horn for the Riverside Philharmonic. Mrs. Brenes currently performs with many orchestras including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, New West Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony and Los Angeles Master Coral orchestra. She is very active in the recording studios and can be heard on many motion picture, television, and Video game soundtracks as a section player. Some of the titles she has worked on include “Godzilla (2014),” “The Lone Ranger,” “Muppets,” “X-men,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Agents of Shield,” and many more. She has toured all over the US as well as Eastern Europe and China, with a number of different musical groups.  

She also greatly enjoys teaching the horn. She became the horn professor at the University of Redlands 2007 and has loved helping the next generation of musicians. For years, she also taught up to 30 students privately at her home and various schools throughout the south land. Her students now dot the country and have gone on to do wonderful things. As well as working as a musician, Laura is also a mother of two young children who keep her quite busy. She and her husband live in Yorba Linda, surrounded by their extended family, on both sides.

Harry Burton was born in London. He trained as an actor at the Central School, and as a director with BBC Television. He has acted and directed in theatre, television, film and radio for thirty years. Highlights include singing the title role in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro for BBC TV; playing Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; creating roles in world premières by Noel Coward and Harold Pinter; and directing the acclaimed documentary WORKING WITH HAROLD PINTER, an intimate portrait of the Nobel prize-winning dramatist. Harry teaches courses and workshops in acting schools and universities around the world. 

Dr. Gustavo Camacho is Assistant Professor of Horn and Brass Area Coordinator at Western Washington University.  He previously served as Instructor of Horn and Chamber Music at the Interlochen Arts Academy and Summer Arts Camp for four years.  He also performed as principal horn of Phoenix Opera for three years while performing regularly with The Phoenix Symphony and serving on the brass faculty at the Arizona School for the Arts. He has performed as guest principal horn with the West Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Traverse Symphony Orchestra, the Musica Nova Orchestra and the Salt River Brass Band, and has performed with numerous orchestras throughout the United States including the National Repertory Orchestra, Symphony of the Southwest, and the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. 

An active soloist and clinician, Dr. Camacho has been a featured soloist with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, the WWU Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra, and the Interlochen Arts Academy Band.  He has also presented masterclasses and performances at conferences, festivals, and institutions in the U.S., China and Luxembourg.  In 2015, Dr. Camacho was a member of the first outside professional brass quintet to tour Cuba, along with distinguished brass musicians John Aley, Mike Davison, Mark Lusk, and Velvet Brown.

Dr. Camacho's principal horn teachers include Nancy Joy and John Ericson, and his chamber ensemble philosophies stem from extensive chamber music study with Empire Brass Quintet founding member Sam Pilafian. Dr. Camacho holds a Bachelor of Music degree from New Mexico State University, and a Master in Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degree in horn performance from Arizona State University.

Rebecca Chambers is a dedicated teacher, chamber musician, and orchestral performer.  Most recently, she completed a semester as Lecturer of Horn at Central Michigan University where she was a sabbatical replacement for the Fall 2014 semester. 

As a passionate chamber musician, Dr. Chambers is a founding member of the Coreopsis Quintet, with whom she performed a concert tour through the North American Cultural Center's Promising Artists of the 21st Century program in Costa Rica in 2013.

Dr. Chambers is currently principal horn of the Ocala Symphony Orchestra and has performed with the Jacksonville Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Albany (GA) Symphony, and Sinfonia Gulf Coast.

She can be heard on the Naxos recording label as principal horn with the Florida State University Symphony Orchestra on the recording Ernst von Dohnanyi: Symphony No. 2 and Two Songs.  She can also be heard on the independently released Vapor Trail from a Paper Plane, a recording of original compositions by guitarist Matthew Cochran.

Dr. Chambers holds a D.M. from the Florida State University, an M.M. from the University of Florida, and a B.M.E. from Central Michigan University.  Her teachers include Michelle Stebleton, Paul Basler, and Bruce Bonnell.

Master Sergeant Bob Cherry is originally from Bridgman, Michigan, and is a member of The U.S. Army Field Band Brass Quintet. He has served as principal horn of the Southwest Michigan Symphony, the Elkhart Symphony, and the South Bend Symphony, and was a Contributing Artist at the 2001 International Horn Society Symposium. He has also held contracted positions with numerous orchestras in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. As a Bloomington Camerata Scholar, MSG Cherry earned a Performer's Certificate from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Music Performance degree at Western Michigan University, where he was both a Medallion and Presidential Scholar. His teachers include Dr. Johnny Pherigo, Dr. Paul Austin, and Mr. Michael Hatfield.

I-Ping Chiu, a native of Taichung, Taiwan, was recently appointed section horn with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in December 2014. She is currently pursuing her DM at Indiana University with Myron Bloom and Richard Seraphinoff. She has also completed her MM at Indiana University and holds a BM from Taipei National University of the Arts studying with Szu-Yuan Chuang. I-Ping has performed with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and recently recorded the United States premiere of Mahler Symphony 9 for chamber orchestra as a founding member of the ensemble, Kammermahler. While at Indiana University, she was a semi-finalist in the International Horn Competition of America  (University Division 2013). I-Ping has also attended many international music festivals such as the Kirishima International Music Festival in Kagoshima, Japan where she studied with Takato Saijo and the Hamamatsu International Wind Instrument Academy and Festival in Shizuoka, Japan where she studied with Jeff Nelsen.

Karen Cubides is a saxophonist and educator, currently active in the Boston area. She is a recent graduate of the Boston Conservatory with an undergraduate degree in saxophone performance. Cubides was Born in Colombia, raised in Miami, and attended Interlochen Arts Academy prior to moving to Boston. 

Cubides is a multifaceted musician, whose talent for management has brought her connections with many of the east coast's finest musicians. Her passion lies in bringing orchestral musicians the public attention they deserve while providing them with a personalized representative service. As a performer, Cubides knows what musicians want and need from their careers and specializes in cultivating real relationships with clients to bring them the success they seek. She is currently employed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and resides in Medford, MA.

Dana Cullen is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. Her main teachers were Jennifer Montone and Jeffrey Lang, of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Dana is the daughter of two musicians. Her mother plays the oboe and English horn, and her father plays the guitar. Her brother and sister, twins, are musicians as well.

Taught by her parents, Dana began piano studies at the age of five. She continued taking piano lessons for ten years, performing a concerto with the Reading Symphony Orchestra, before giving up piano lessons to focus more on the horn. She began horn studies at the age of nine, again with her parents, and continued through high school. While a high school student, Dana played in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, which has a relationship with the Curtis Institute. At the age of seventeen, Dana was accepted to attend Curtis and study with Jennifer Montone of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Since beginning her studies at Curtis, Dana has had many opportunities to learn and perform not only in Philadelphia, but around the world. With the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, she has performed at Verizon Hall, Carnegie Hall, and in the Dresden Frauenkirche. In 2013, she performed the Penderecki Sextet with Roberto Diaz, president of the Curtis Institute, in Pennsylvania, California, and Seoul, Korea. Outside of Curtis, Dana has attended several summer festivals, including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, which included a tour of China.

In the fall of 2015, Dana will begin her Masters degree at Rice University, studying with William VerMeulen. She is excited about this next stage in her life and can't wait to see what happens next. 

The Chinook Winds are Montana's only professional wind quintet and serve as the resident ensemble and principal musicians of the Great Falls Symphony. They present chamber music concerts and interactive school programs, as well as tours and residencies across the state of Montana and the whole Pacific Northwest. Their mission is to bring high quality, accessible, classical music to the diverse and often rural audiences they serve.

Norman Gonzales, flute - M.M., Eastman School of Music 
Melanie Pozdol, oboe - M.M., Eastman School of Music
Chris Mothersole, clarinet - M.M., Royal College of Music
Mike Nelson, horn - M.M., University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
Elizabeth Crawford, bassoon - M.M., University of Utah

Kurt Civilette is a freelance performer and teacher based in East Lansing, Michigan. He holds several permanent orchestral positions in the area including principal horn with the South Bend Symphony and principal horn with Midland Symphony. He is also 3rd horn in Flint Symphony and Ann Arbor Symphony. As a member of the South Bend Symphony principal wind quintet and Ann Arbor Symphony Brass Quintet he performs chamber concerts and educational concerts. Other recent freelance engagements include playing sub/extra on stage with Detroit Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, and Ft. Wayne Philharmonic and in the opera pit with Michigan Opera Theater and Santa Fe Opera. He is frequently asked to play guest principal, playing that role with Ann Arbor, Flint, Michigan Opera Theater, Kalamazoo, Saginaw Bay, Windsor (ON), and West Michigan Symphonies. He is the horn instructor at Lansing Community College and Michigan State University's Community Music School.

For 15 years from 1995-2010, Kurt was full-time 3rd horn/associate principal with New Mexico Symphony in Albuquerque, substituting as interim principal horn for the entire 2001-02 season. Before winning the permanent job in New Mexico, he held temporary positions as principal horn with Charleston (SC) Symphony, acting principal horn of the Savannah(GA) Symphony, and assistant principal with Honolulu Symphony. While in New Mexico he was also 3rd horn with Santa Fe Symphony and appeared with Santa Fe Opera orchestra. As a successful freelance musician, he has appeared with Chicago Lyric Opera, Chicago Symphony, Grant Park, Jacksonville and North Carolina Symphonies, and played many commercial jingles and recording sessions.

During the summers, Kurt plays principal horn with the Southern Illinois Music festival in Carbondale, appearing as a featured soloist in 2012. He has appeared in various US and international summer festivals including Spoleto festival in USA and Italy, the Assisi festival (Italy), the Kumamoto festival in Japan, and Music from Angel Fire.

Lanette Compton is the Associate Professor of Horn at Oklahoma State University where she has been since 2005.  She earned her Bachelors of Music Degree in performance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a student of Allen French and her Masters of Music Degree in performance from the University of North Texas as a student of Dr. William Scharnberg.  Lanette is presently a member of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and the Tulsa Opera Orchestra. At OSU, Lanette directs an active horn choir that has performed at regional and international horn workshops. She also hosted the 2010 Mid-South Horn Workshop. Lanette has performed on more than a dozen CD’s, including the critically acclaimed CD The Manne We Love: Gershwin Revisited featuring the Steve Houghton Quintet and the University of North Texas Two O’clock Lab Band.

Students in the OSU Horn Studio have placed in regional and international competitions.  They were winners of a section masterclass with the Cleveland Symphony Horn Section at the International Horn Workshop in 2008 and winners of the quartet competition at the Mid-South Horn Workshop in 2011 and co-winners in 2014.  Students have made summer music programs such as the Banff Summer Arts Festival, Round Top Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, and Texas Music Festival. Studio members have also been accepted for graduate study at Rice University, Northwestern University, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, University of Texas – Austin, Eastman School of Music, Southern Methodist University, Bowling Green State University, and Arizona State University.

John Cox is Principal Horn of the Oregon Symphony. He is a long-time member of the Mainly Mozart Festival orchestra in San Diego, a frequent performer with Chamber Music Northwest, has been a faculty member of the Barry Tuckwell Institute, and has lectured at numerous IHS workshops, most recently in London during IHS 46. He also works in creative consulting with the Oregon Symphony in community relationship building and partnering for new audiences in underserved venues. He records as solo horn with the Oregon Symphony, as hornist with the Westwood Woodwind Quintet, and with anyone else who will pay union wages.

Dr. Peggy DeMers, Associate Professor of Horn, joined the Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX faculty in 1991. Her musical and horn studies were at the Cincinnati Conservatory (M.M.) and the University of Wisconsin at Madison (B.M., D.M.A),  with Douglas Hill and Michael Hatfield. Her extensive teaching, orchestral, and   other ensemble experience includes principal horn with the Minnesota Opera Orchestra and with orchestras in Wisconsin, Minnesota and New York. Currently  she is principal horn of the Lake Charles, Louisiana Symphony.

From 1993-98 she was a member of the Spoleto Festival USA and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy  and  appeared as guest artist (principal horn soloist) at the Mezzogiorno  Concert  series sponsored by the Gian Carlo Menotti in conjunction with the  Festival of  Two Worlds.  Since 2004, Peggy DeMers has served as faculty/guest artist at the  Assisi Performing Arts festival performing primarily chamber music in Assisi,  Italy.

Dr. DeMers' research and  performances on the Alphorn have been recognized as truly authentic.  She has given lectures for the International Horn Symposium in the USA and for regional   workshops. She was featured on the cover of the AAA Home and Away magazine   (summer 1991) performing on the Alphorn, and in the Minnesota American Traveler  (1992). In 1999 she recorded "To the Winter Sun" by Douglas Hill on Thoughtful  Wanderings, a MSR Classics label. In 2006, Dr. DeMers was the guest artist  performing on the Alphorn for the Sigma Alpha Iota tri-annual national conference in Orlando, Florida. In 2007, the Swiss embassy requested her to  perform the Alphorn for the opening of the IMAX Eiger mountain documentary  film.  In 2010, Dr. DeMers worked with Capitol One on a TV commercial, performing the Alpine horn.

In 2009, Dr. DeMers began teaching Alphorn at the Midwest Alphorn retreat, a summer 5-day intensive Alphorn immersion program.  It has been so popular and successful that it has included performances throughout the region.

Dr. Natalie Douglass is a Fulbright scholar who will start her grant project at the Kodaly Institute of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Hungary this fall.  She recently graduated from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she served for three years as the horn studio Graduate Teaching Assistant for Professor Randy Gardner and also served a second Brass Methods Graduate Teaching Assistantship. Her primary area of research is developing pedagogical approaches to connect aural skills training to brass instruction, and she has given masterclasses on this topic at universities and workshops around the United States as well as the 2014 IHS International Symposium in London, UK.  Dr. Douglass is the author of "Aural Approaches to Horn Instruction," an article in the February 2014 issue of the Horn Call.  She has also contributed to research regarding the relationship between speech patterns and brass articulation and will present on this topic at the 2015 IHS International Symposium in Los Angeles this August.  Dr. Douglass is an active freelancer and teacher, most recently performing with the Louisville and Kentucky Symphonies, Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival orchestra, and the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival orchestra in Germany.  She teaches at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp and has taught horn privately and in masterclasses in Cincinnati, Chicago, Champaign-Urbana, and at the Illinois Summer Youth Music program at the University of Illinois.

Philip Doyle was born in London and studied horn with Adrian Leaper, and later with Zdenek Svab in Brazil.

Since 1977 he has been living in Rio de Janeiro,  where he is principal horn in the Municipal Theater  Orchestra and the Orquestra  Petrobras Sinfônica.

Mr. Doyle has been a member of the Quinteto Villa-Lobos wind quintet since 1987 and has toured extensively with this ensemble, recording 12 cds of Brazilian music. The latest cd, called “Rasgando Seda”,  was nominated for the 2012 Latin Grammy.

Philip teaches horn at the Federal  University of Rio de Janeiro.

Steven Durnin took his first professional orchestra position on French horn with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Veracruz in Veracruz Mexico in 1980. Steve returned to Los Angeles in the spring of 1982 and began his freelance career. Mr. Durnin has worked for most of the top composers and arrangers in “The Industry,” including John Williams, Henry Mancini, Allen Silvestri, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Lalo Schifrin, and many more.

In addition, Mr. Durnin has always been an active live performer. Included in the list of groups with which he has performed: the Pacific Symphony, the Pasadena Symphony, the Santa Barbara Symphony, the New West Symphony, the Long Beach Opera, the Riverside County Philharmonic, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Pasadena Pops Orchestra, the San Luis Obispo Symphony, and the Capistrano Valley Symphony. He was Principal horn of the Oregon Coast Music Festival. Currently, he is a tenured member of the Long Beach Symphony.

As a soloist, Steven Durnin has appeared as an artist at several international and regional horn workshops. He was a finalist in the 1993 American Horn Competition, held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As a member of the Angeles Horn Trio, he has taken on the project of discovering heretofore unknown works for this ensemble.

Eastern Standard (Dr. Heidi Lucas, horn; Dr. Zach Collins, tuba; Dr. Jacob Ertl, piano) was formed in the fall of 2014 at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Comprised of faculty members from the IUP Music Department, the group is actively involved in promoting literature for this instrumentation through performance and the pursuit of commissioning projects. In the fall of 2014, Eastern Standard gave performances throughout Pennsylvania and New York, including a 4 day tour of Long Island. In the Spring of 2015, Eastern Standard performed at the 2015 Northeast Horn Workshop (held at Penn State), and the 2015 Northeast Tuba/Euphonium Regional Conference (held at Ithaca College), as well as other performances in Pennsylvania. The group is planning a recording project for release in the spring of 2016.

Michal Emanovsky began playing horn in his native Czech Republic and in 1994 received a full scholarship from the Foundation for a Civil Society to attend the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California where he studied horn with Kurt Snyder.  He was accepted four years later at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he completed his Bachelor's degree under the tutelage of Myron Bloom and Jerome Ashby.  Michal concluded his studies at the Juilliard School in New York where he received a Master's degree in the studio of William Purvis.  

Festivals that Michal has participated in include Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Nationaal Jeugd Orkest in Holland, and the Festival Dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.

Michal has performed chamber music in Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and at the Miller Theatre of Columbia University in New York. He has played with the International Contemporary Ensemble and also collaborated with Pierre Boulez in a performance of his work with the Argento Ensemble.

Michal is currently serving as associate principal horn of Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra under the leadership of Myung-Whun Chung. He was also the principal horn of Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra and guest principal with the Korean Symphony Orchestra. He has made frequent appearances at Carnegie Hall and other notable halls around the world including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Musikverein in Vienna. In 2008, Michal became adjunct faculty member at Kyunghee University in Seoul.

Eli Epstein enjoys a multi-faceted career as performer, educator, conductor, and author. Epstein was second horn of the Cleveland Orchestra (1987-2005) and professor at Cleveland Institute of Music. He has appeared several times as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. 
Epstein left Cleveland in 2005, and moved to Boston to more devote time and energy toward educational and creative endeavors. An active chamber musician, he has performed at Jordan Hall, Severance Hall, Tanglewood, Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, Music Academy of the West where he served on faculty (2005-2013) and the Aspen Music Festival where he served as principal horn of the Aspen Chamber Symphony (2000-2012). Epstein is currently on faculty of New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory. His students hold posts in major orchestras throughout the U.S. and Canada.  

Advocating the idea that music can be a meaningful and uplifting force in society, in 2009 Epstein won Grand Prize in the Entrepreneur the Arts Contest for his Inside Out Concerts.

Epstein’s book, Horn Playing from the Inside Out, A Method for All Brass Musicians, (second edition published in 2014), was celebrated in the International Horn Society’s journal as “an overwhelmingly stimulating and productive treatise…that will yield positive influence on legions of horn players—students and professionals alike.”

Orchestral Excerpts for Low Horn, Epstein’s album released in 2014, was acclaimed as “an incredible learning tool [with] exceptional demonstrations of the excerpts” and “an invaluable and exciting addition to every horn player and teacher’s library!” www.eliepstein.com

Erika2 (Erika Squared) - One day at the California All-State Honor Band, two Los Angeles girls named Erika bonded over the fact that they shared a first name, played Hans Hoyer horns, were born exactly two weeks apart, and had big aspirations for careers in music. Years later, they are still close friends and both enjoy active playing careers. Erika Miras currently freelances in Miami, Florida and has held positions with the Jackson Symphony and YMF Debut Orchestra. She has also performed with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Florida Grand Opera, and Dearborn Symphony. Erika Binsley is currently pursuing a DMA at the University of Maryland, under the guidance of Gregory Miller. Prior to moving to Washington D.C., Binsley was a member of the Wichita Symphony and Lieurance Woodwind Quintet. Both young women attended the University of Southern California, where they had Kristy Morrell in common as a teacher.

Founded by the initiative of the late Mr. Y. Itoh in 1988, the Japan Horn Society now counts more than 600 members, chaired by Prof. T. Higuchi. The membership, like in IHS, is open to anyone from professionals, amateurs and students, and is led by its regular board directors for activities such as annual Horn Festivals, competitions for talented young horn players as well as occasional horn concerts and lectures given by the top-ranking hornists  - international or domestic, and publication of an official quarterly magazine for its members. Despite it represents one of the most occidental music styles and its history relatively short, the horn playing gained popularity at an unparalleled speed in Japan and its level of performance has risen noticeably from generation after generation. The JHS Horn Ensemble formed by the talented hornists from Japan's major symphony orchestras, freelance players and music academy students. They had a great success at the stages of IHS Symposium every year since 39th Symposium in La Chaux-de-Fonds to 46th Symposium in London. They will make a thrilling contribution with their challenging sound and fresh musicality.

Jeffrey Fair has been the Principal Horn of the Seattle Symphony since February 2013 and a member of the Orchestra since 2003. He also performs as Principal Horn of the Seattle Opera. He is on the faculty at the University of Washington and is responsible for instruction of all horn students. Mr. Fair has served as guest Principal Horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, Mr. Fair appears throughout the Northwest as soloist, chamber musician, clinician, and teacher. Prior to moving to Seattle, he was Principal Horn of the San Antonio Symphony for three seasons, appearing as soloist on several occasions. Mr. Fair completed a Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School. A native of Oklahoma, he received a Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Oklahoma.

Amanda Skidmore Farasat is a trained horn player, and a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, The University of Wisconsin-Madison (BM), and Northwestern University (MM). Her teachers include John Covert, Bruce Henniss, Douglas Hill, William VerMeulen, and Gail Williams.

Throughout her musical training, Amanda maintained a keen interest in ergonomics and issues related to body usage in musicians. In 1998, she received an Aston-Patterning® session as a result of a performance related shoulder injury, and immediately recognized that the work was of immense potential value for musicians. She felt confident that its techniques, which joined advanced methods of postural, movement and muscle tension analysis with an innovative approach to hands-on bodywork, ergonomic adjustments, and activity-specific movement coaching, could be utilized not only for injury recovery, but also for injury prevention and the optimization of musical potential. With the ultimate goal of introducing the work to other performing artists, Amanda began her studies in Aston-Patterning® in 2000 and became a Certified Aston-Patterning® Practitioner in 2004. Since then, she has continued her studies in the field and, cumulatively, has completed over 1000 hours of direct training with Judith Aston, the founder of the Aston Paradigm.

Amanda has held Aston-Patterning workshops for musicians in multiple venues, including the National Orchestral Institute, the University of Hartford-Hartt School of Music, Northwestern University, and Yale University. In 2014, she gave presentations on Aston-Patterning at the Free to Play conference on Music and Medicine at the University of South Florida, and at the International Symposium of the Performing Arts Medicine Association in Aspen, Colorado. Currently, Judith Aston and Amanda are working jointly to develop written and web content on Aston-Patterning® for musicians.

Amanda owns and operates the Illinois Center for Aston-Patterning®, with offices in Chicago and Champaign-Urbana, where her work is primarily focused on the needs of performing artists. She is available to teach master classes and workshops nationwide. Amanda can be contacted through her website, www.AlignedForPerformance.com.

Randall Faust has served the International Horn Society in a variety of roles including Composition Contest Coordinator, Advisory Council Member, Secretary, President, and as Host of the 41st International Symposium—held at Western Illinois University in 2009. In addition, he has hosted the annual Western Illinois Horn Festival every year since 2002. He is a Professor of Music at Western Illinois University, and Hornist of the Camerata Woodwind Quintet and LaMoine Brass Quintet. Previous teaching experience includes The Interlochen Arts Camp, Auburn University, and The Shenandoah Conservatory of Music.

Dr. Faust has composed many original works for the Horn—including works for Solo Horn, as well as Horn and other Media. These have been performed in notable venues such as The National Gallery of Art, The Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, as well as Symposia Of The International Horn Society. His pedagogical works include Interval Etudes, an instructional DVD—How to Stop a Horn, and the editions of Marvin Howe’s books The Advancing Hornist—Volumes I and II.  

His recordings include the Horn music of William Presser on the CD—Fantasies on American Themes, as well as the music of Anthony Iannaccone, John Steinmetz and Jacques Hetú on Crystal Records with the Camerata Woodwind Quintet. Several hornists including David Griffin, Andrew Pelletier, Jeffrey Snedeker, and Steven Gross have recorded his compositions for Horn, and several others—including James Criswell, Alan Mattingly, Kristen Johns, and Kimberly Rooney have discussed his music in their doctoral dissertations.

Hailed as "A nice guy...I think he plays tuba or something", hornist Allen Fogle is an active freelance musician and educator in the Los Angeles area. Equally at home on stage and in the recording studio, he has performed with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, as Principal Horn of the American Youth Symphony, and is currently in demand as a recording musician for the Hollywood film, television, and video game industries, having contributed to the recent scores of Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Alexandre Desplat, and John Powell, as well as many others, and can also be heard on recordings with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Midnight Winds, and Canadian Brass.

In addition to orchestral playing and studio recording, Allen maintains a busy schedule of chamber music performances with the Kaleidescope Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Horn Quartet, Midnight Winds Quintet, and Pacific Brass, including performances at New York’s Mannes School of Music, the Paderewski Festival, Laguna Beach Live!, and as a finalist at the Coleman Chamber Music Competition. 

A lover of new music, Allen is a founding member of the Los Angeles-based contemporary music ensemble “wild Up”, which regularly commissions and premiers new works by living composers, performs as Principal Horn of the Long Beach Opera Orchestra, and further enjoys pushing the sonic boundaries of brass instruments with Trio Kobayashi. 

Currently on Faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, he has presented masterclasses at the Eastman School of Music, University of Southern California, and University of California Santa Barbara. Allen has also been on the teaching staff of Kendall Betts Horn Camp since 2008, served as brass coach for Harvard-Westlake Middle School, and frequently teaches as a guest artist at Harmony Project Los Angeles. 

Allen attended the University of Southern California, where he was a recipient of the Vincent DeRosa Scholarship, as well as the Eastman School of Music, where he was a Howard Hanson Scholar.  His primary horn instructors include Peter Kurau, James Thatcher, Kendall Betts, and Lowell Greer.

When he's not performing or stressing the ears of his Eagle Rock neighbors, Allen enjoys spending too much on coffee, craft beer, and hamburgers with Trio Kobayashi.

Lin Foulk is Associate Professor of Music at Western Michigan University, where she teaches horn and performs with the Western Brass Quintet and the Western Wind Quintet. International performing invitations have taken her to Spain, Russia, China, the Netherlands, Thailand, Honduras, and Canada. She frequently performs in Michigan with the Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestras. In the summer she is on faculty at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp in Lyman, New Hampshire.

Especially interested in music with horn by female composers, Foulk has performed and presented lectures on works by women and female performers at numerous festivals and universities across the United States. Her solo disc, “Four Elements: Works for Horn and Piano by Female Composers” was released in 2004 and is available through her website, www.linfoulk.org. Most recently Foulk has been presenting classes on classical music improvisation, which she studied during a sabbatical leave in 2013-14. Dr. Foulk received degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Dr. Rose French performs with groups in the Southwest including the Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Opera, Tucson Symphony, Flagstaff Symphony, Symphony of the West Valley, Orquestra Sinfonica de Monterrey, Orquestra de Baja California and has toured China twice as principal horn of the American Festival Orchestra. She is also the Director of the Mill Ave Chamber Players, Managing Director of the Pangean Orchestra and member of the Phoenix Chamber Brass. French has been a contributing artist at the International Women's Brass Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan and the International Horn Symposiums in Brisbane, Australia, and Cape Town, South Africa, where she also won the Dorothy Frizelle International Horn Excerpt Competition. 

French completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts and Master of Music at Arizona State University and holds degrees in Music Education, Music Technology and Performance from Duquesne University. She is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University and Adjunct Faculty at Phoenix College, Paradise Valley Community College, and Grand Canyon University. Rose serves as Exhibitors and Advertising Coordinator for the International Horn Society, maintains a private studio and teaches at Rosie's House: A Music Academy for Children, a non-profit music academy that provides free instruction and instruments to under-served youth.

Nobuaki Fukukawa, a native of Tokyo, began his career as the youngest ever principal horn of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 20. He is recognised as the most remarkable Japanese horn player of his generation, and his performances consistently attract critical acclaim: “He is the one horn player who has rewritten the history of brass-playing in Japan as well as raising the bar for all horn players,” (Japan Horn Society,) “He is technically superb,” (Ongaku-no-Tomo Magazine,) “His graceful sound and innate musicality transported us to another world “ (Mainichi newspaper)

Now he is a member of the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, an orchestra which performs regularly under the batons of most of the world’s top conductors, including Seiji Ozawa, Herbert Blomstedt and Valery Gergiev.

As a soloist, Nobuaki has performed various horn concerti such as those by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Strauss, Britten, Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, Knussen, Ruth Gipps (the Japanese premier) with Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Yokohama Sinfonietta. He also appears regularly in recital series and chamber music concerts at celebrated halls in Japan, including Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Suntory Hall, Tokyo City Opera, Tsuda Hall, Kitara Hall in Sapporo and the NHK Hall in Osaka. 

Nobuaki has channelled his passion for the horn into developing contemporary music for the instrument. He has commissioned many works and premieres these on a regular basis in his recitals. www.nobuaki-fukukawa.com

Erin Futterer is currently completing her DMA in performance as well as a secondary masters in ethnomusicology at Eastman School of Music where she studies with Peter Kurau. At Eastman, she is the natural horn teaching assistant, and is pursuing research based on conservatory culture. She is the winner of the previous two Eastman Concerto Competitions, first as a soloist, and most recently as a member of a horn quartet, who performed James Beckel's "In the Mind's Eye." 

A Fulbright Fellowship recipient, Erin completed her masters at the Norges Musikkhøgskole in Oslo, where she studied with Frøydis Ree Wekre. As a product of her time in Norway, Erin is currently writing Frøydis's biography, end date tbd...For her bachelors, Erin studied with Gail Williams at Northwestern. She currently resides in Rochester NY, where she is the hornteacher at Roberts Wesleyan, and keeps a thriving garden.

Randy C. Gardner is Professor of Horn at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he was awarded the Ernest N. Glover Outstanding Teacher Award in 2011.  A successful and dedicated teacher, his students occupy performing and teaching positions throughout the US and abroad. 

Prior to joining the CCM faculty, Randy Gardner was Second Horn of The Philadelphia Orchestra for 22 years, under the music directorships of Wolfgang Sawallisch, Riccardo Muti, and Eugene Ormandy. 

Randy maintains an active schedule as an orchestral and chamber musician, soloist, and clinician.  He is a member of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and performs regularly with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra. 

Randy Gardner is the author of two acclaimed books, Good Vibrations: Masterclasses for Brass Players and Mastering the Horn’s Low Register.  Randy was also a performer and co-producer of the Summit Records CD, Shared Reflections: The Legacy of Philip Farkas.  Details on these publications and Modular Music Masterclasses can be found at randygardnerhorn.com.

An enthusiastic member of the International Horn Society, Randy Gardner served on the IHS Advisory Council from 1999-2005.  He was a Featured Artist at three International Symposia, and has been a Contributing Artist at many international and regional horn workshops.

Randy Gardner’s major horn teachers were Philip Farkas, Christopher Leuba, Ethel Merker, and William Adam.  

In his free time, Randy enjoys spending time with his family, fishing, hiking, reading, sports, and church/community activism.  Sports psychology and its application to music performance is a particular area of interest. 

Evan Geiger joined the Unite States Army Band "Pershing's Own" in 2011, the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra as Principal horn in 2009 and also played Principal with the Lyrica Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Virtuosi and the 2011 Artosphere Festival Orchestra. He earned his Doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music completing his dissertation on a comprehensive analysis and comparison of French Horn Warm-Ups. Many other reputed orchestras have sought his talents including the National Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Wheeling Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra. The 2010 holiday season marked his second year winning positions with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in New York City. While in New York, he played regularly with Dicapo Opera, the New York Camerata, the Metro Chamber Orchestra, and the Riverside Symphonia, with which he won a section position in 2009. Evan has premiered several contemporary works with the Tactus Contemporary Ensemble as well as the New York Chamber Virtuosi. A frequent Broadway musician, he has played on shows such as The Lion King, Shrek, The Little Mermaid, Wicked, and South Pacific to name a few. Evan has recorded several albums and soundtracks including Elevation by Patrick Williams, nominated for two Grammys.

Marc Gelfo is a multidisciplinary French hornist and teacher. Undergraduate degrees in cognitive science and computer science, from Northwestern University, informed his music studies, and after two years at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music he won his first full-time symphony job. After six seasons in the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Marc returned to America to pursue the next stage in his career as a performer and as a coach who uses martial arts, learning sciences, and mindfulness to help other musicians.  Marc has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra, and other ensembles around the world. He currently plays principal horn with the Florida Grand Opera and Palm Beach Symphony. Find out more about his music-making, background, and teaching at www.marcgelfo.com.

Gina Gillie is an Associate Professor of Music at Pacific Lutheran University where she teaches horn and aural skills, conducts a horn choir, and performs frequently in solo and chamber recitals. As an orchestral player, she is Assistant Principal with the Tacoma Symphony and actively freelances with several other regional professional orchestras. She is a member of two faculty chamber ensembles at PLU, the Camas Wind Quintet and the Lyric Brass Quintet. Gillie studied Horn Performance with Douglas Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her Masters degree in 2006 and her Doctorate of Musical Arts in 2009. She completed her Bachelors degree in Horn Performance at Pacific Lutheran University in 2004 where she studied with Kathleen Vaught Farner. A lover of early music, Gillie frequently performs and lectures on natural horn. As a composer, Gillie enjoys writing chamber music for horn and other instruments. "To the Seasons" for soprano, horn and piano and "The Great Migration" for two horns and piano are published through RM Williams and have already received several performances in the United States and elsewhere. A "Trio for Brass" written in 2014 is unpublished, but has been performed by several groups.

The Golden West Winds is part of the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West from Travis Air Force Base, California. Comprised of Staff Sergeant Melissa Rocha, flute; Master Sergeant Coreen Levin, oboe; Airman 1st Class Alaina Pritz, clarinet; Airman 1st Class Daniel Shifren, bassoon; Airman 1st Class Daniel Nebel, horn, this ensemble supports a wide variety of musical events ranging from military ceremonies and patriotic shows to educational programs and recitals of original works for woodwind quintet.

Tailoring every show to its audience, the Golden West Winds performs a variety of different community relations concerts throughout the western United States. The Golden West Winds’ innovative music education program allows the group to share their enthusiasm and expertise in a lively, interactive concert presented to elementary students. The quintet provides concerts, clinics, and master classes for middle school through college school students, the quintet provides concerts. In this capacity, The Golden West Winds has performed at schools such as the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the University of Redlands, and Sonoma State University.

The members of the Golden West Winds are all professional Air Force musicians working in support of Air Force and Air Mobility Command official military recruiting and community relations objectives.

Warren Gref performed as one of the horn players on a GRAMMY-winning CD (Complete Chamber Music of Carlos Chavez, Volume 2) and is also active as a conductor, teacher, and administrator throughout Southern California.  Mr. Gref had been a long-time member of the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, and had also been a member of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra.  After 36 years with the San Diego Symphony, he has retired from the SDSO so that he can focus on conducting, teaching, giving master classes, and creating innovative ways of bringing classical music to communities.  Mr. Gref recently presented his 3-day Horn Weekend Workshop (this being his 4th Annual) which he gives every summer in Temecula, CA.

Mr. Gref had performed as a substitute 4th horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during the 1998-99 and most of the 1999-2000 seasons which included performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Hollywood Bowl, recording several CDs with the orchestra, and national and international tours.  In May of 1999, Mr. Gref was invited to give a lecture/demonstration at the International Horn Society's 31st Annual Symposium held at the University of Georgia.  

Two of Mr. Gref’s priorities are finding ways of making music accessible to as wide a range of the community as possible, and also bringing live music to school-age children and letting them know there are choices in music other than just what is offered on MTV and other pop venues.  Since moving to the Temecula/Murrieta area in 2003, Mr. Gref has presented dozens of assemblies at area elementary and middle schools, conducting full performances of “Peter and the Wolf” and also selections from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”, among other programs.  He has also given demonstrations and talked about his experiences as a professional musician to classes at both the elementary school and middle school levels.  Over the years, Mr. Gref has been involved in numerous outreach performances, both through his own efforts and also through the San Diego Symphony with chamber ensembles and “Meet A Musician” programs.  Mr. Gref was in charge of two such highly successful series through the San Diego Symphony at OASIS in Mission Valley, and also the Kroc Center at the University Avenue Salvation Army.

Prior to moving to San Diego in 1979, Mr. Gref had taught at the University of Georgia, and the University of New Mexico, and also during the summers at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina where he was Principal horn.  Mr. Gref had also been Principal horn with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.  Mr. Gref studied at the University of Southern California with Wendell Holss and the Cleveland Institute of Music with Myron Bloom, and began his orchestral career at the age of 21 as Assistant Principal horn with the San Antonio Symphony.

Christopher Griffin, freelance musician and teacher was recently appointed principal horn of Symphony Augusta.  He is principal horn with the Union Symphony, NC as well as third horn with the Western Piedmont Symphony, of Hickory, NC. Along with his busy performing career, he is instructor of horn at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Wingate University.  He has been a featured soloist with the Ballentine Chamber Orchestra performing the Sinfonia Concertante by W.A.Mozart and will be performing it again this year with the Union Symphony Orchestra.   He has performed as an extra with the Charlotte Symphony, Greenville Symphony and the Charleston Symphony Orchestras. He is an active member of the International Horn Society participating as a contributing artist with the Palmetto Trio at the 46th International Symposium in Memphis. Dr. Griffin received his DMA from the University of Southern California, MM degrees in music theory and horn performance from Temple University and the BM in horn performance from Auburn University. His primary teachers include Richard Todd, Randy Gardner and Dr. Randall Faust.

Steven Gross is Professor of Horn and Head of the Wind, Brass, and Percussion Area at the University of California–Santa Barbara. Dr. Gross is also a former member of the Atlanta Symphony, National Symphony, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and for 24 years principal horn of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. 

Steven Gross has released five solo CDs with orchestra, three with Dale Clevenger conducting.  Reviews from the American Record Guide describe his playing as “outstanding, striking the right balance between thoughtfulness and verve, planning and spontaneity…an excellent tone and the ability and temperament to play heroically.”

His most recent release is the debut recording of the Czech-American Horn Duo (Summit 636). Czech Philharmonic hornist Jirí Havlík is conductor and second horn.  Fanfare Magazine describes the duo as “accomplished soloists able to produce a firm yet lush tone, rich resonance and color, and clear articulation, and they fearlessly execute the technical complexities of the works.”

Dr. Gross’s international solo appearances include Austria, China, Czech Republic, England, Hungary, Kenya, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, and Taiwan.  In the United States, he has presented concerts and masterclasses at the Eastman School; Oberlin, Peabody, and Wheaton Conservatories; Universities, including Alabama, Baylor, Florida State, Indiana, Miami, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State, Southern Methodist, Texas, and Washington; his alma mater, the University of Michigan; and others. His summers include performing as principal horn of the Oregon Coast Music Festival Orchestra, horn faculty at Horns in the Redwoods near San Francisco, and the Crescendo Summer Institute in Tokaj, Hungary.

At the age of 21, Steven Gross won the First International Heldenleben Horn Competition. He is now Director of the International Horn Competition of America, North America’s leading solo event for horn.

Steven's pride and joy is his family: wife Julie, son Mike, daughter Katie, and daughter in law Lily.

Adrian Hallam has redefined Beginner Band music with his highly innovative and energetic approach. His works, "Stadium Rock", "Haunted" and "Kung Fu", have become some of Australia’s most popular performance pieces. Adrian has published many Horn and Piano works across all grade levels. His compositions have been performed at the Midwest Clinic and shortlisted in the American Band Association’s Young Band Composition Competition as well as the UK Songwriting Contest. Adrian is currently the Principal Horn with the New South Wales Police Concert Band. As a freelance musician, he has performed on studio recordings and soundtracks. Adrian has also worked with many orchestras and diverse performers such as comedian Eric Idle, Bootleg Beatles, Daleks from Dr Who, and Grammy nominated hip-hop artist Ryan Leslie.

Los Angeles native Dylan Skye Hart is a busy freelance musician. Depending on the day, he can be found recording music for film, television, video games, and theme parks as well as performing a wide array of concerts in all genres: pop, jazz, contemporary, and classical. 

Dylan is very active in the Los Angeles film music scene. He has recorded for every major Hollywood composer on movies including Frozen, Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Godzilla, and The Hangover III. Dylan can also be heard playing solo horn on Bob Dylan's (his namesake) most recent album Shadows in the Night. In the summer of 2013, Dylan toured Europe with The Who doubling on horn, trumpet, trombone, Wagner tuba, and mellophone. He has also toured with John Williams’ Star Wars in Concert and Eden Espinosa of Wicked. Dylan has recorded albums and made television appearances with music legends Michael Buble, Sting, Neil Patrick Harris, Stevie Wonder, Wu-Tang Clan, Gladys Night, Yo-Yo Ma, Neil Young, and The Beatles.

In the orchestral world, Dylan has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Santa Barbara Symphony, and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra to name a few. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Horn Quartet and the Modern Brass Quintet. Dylan is a past prizewinner in the Professional Division of the International Horn Competition of America. When not playing horn, Dylan, a “foodie”, enjoys cooking, yelping restaurants, ice hockey, golf, surfing, soccer, and hanging out with his wife/IHS 47 Co-Host Annie Bosler. www.dylanskyehart.com

Born in Minnesota, Claire Hellweg began the horn at age ten and later studied with David Kamminga of the Minnesota Orchestra. In 2005 she received a degree in Horn Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied with Douglas Hill.  Claire obtained her masters degree in 2011 from Frøydis Ree Wekre at the Norwegian Academy of Music with the support of grants from the Norway-America Association, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Sons of Norway and the Minnesota State Arts Board.  She has participated in a variety of festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Opera in the Ozarks, Bar Harbor Brass Camp, Madeline Island Music Camp, Instrumenta Oaxaca, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.  Claire has performed in thirteen countries with various groups such as the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, South Dakota Symphony, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Yucatan Symphony Orchestra, the Norwegian Air Force Band and the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra, of which she is currently principal horn.  In addition, Claire loves working with young hornists.  She has consistently maintained a private studio and is currently Horn Instructor at the University of Guanajuato School of Music and the Trinitate Philarhmonia in Leon, Mexico, a music program for low-income children.  Claire is also an avid writer.  She has been a published author in The Horn Call, the journal of the International Horn Society, and has had published a Spanish translation of Douglas Hill’s book, “Warm-Ups and Maintenance Sessions for the Horn Player.”  Besides playing the horn, Claire is interested in Alexander Technique, learning languages, and cooking.  She lives in Guanajuato, Mexico with her trumpeter husband and their two year old son, Abraham.

After graduating with a degree in economics from Nagasaki University, Mr. Takeshi Hidaka went on to study horn at the Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1996 he continued his studies at the Conservatorium Maastricht in the Netherlands. He studied under Prof. E. Penzel and Prof. W. Sanders at Maastricht, and Prof. Kozo Moriyama, Makoto Yamada, and Yasunori Tahara in Japan.

Upon returning home to Japan in 2000, he joined the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra. He was also a member of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, before joining the NHK Symphony Orchestra,Tokyo in 2005. He was the acting principal horn of NHK from 2008-2013.

Mr. Hidaka is also a member of Tsunobue Shudan horn ensemble and "The Horn Quartet".

Mr. Hidaka was invited as a chamber musician and soloist to the 2009 "Musikalischer Sommer" music festival in Ostfriesland, Germany. While there he drew acclaim for his performance of Mozart's Sinfonie Concertante.

He has been a part of many projects and performances which collaborate the horn with the fine arts. Including one program entitled "The Harmony of the Horn and Sculpture". In April of 2013, Mr. Hidaka became an associate professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He also is on faculty at the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music as a visiting professor.

 His "Kopprasch Sixty Selected Studies for French Horn"  (BMCD-1013/1014)

BELLOLI: ”EIGHT STUDIES” (BMCD-1019) etude CD was released in 2013 by bit map, and his solo CD "Variation for Horn"  was released by fontec (FOCD20089) in 2012. The new CD ”HORIZON” (CPCD-38004) was just released by CAMERATA TOKYO in 2015. http://hidaka.conmoto.jp

Douglas Hill served as Professor of Music-Horn at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from1974 through the spring of 2011. Having been previously named an Emily Mead Baldwin-Bascom Professor in the Creative Arts, Hill was the recipient of the 2009 Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. He is a Past President of the International Horn Society and was made an Honorary Member  in 2008. He performed and recorded extensively with the Wisconsin Brass Quintet and was first horn with the Rochester Philharmonic, New Haven Symphony, New York City Ballet, Contemporary Chamber Ensembles of New York and Chicago, Aspen Festival Orchestra, and for 30 years with the Madison Symphony. Hill was an original member of the Spoleto Festival Brass Quintet, performed with the New York and American Brass Quintets, and performed and recorded with the Wingra Woodwind Quintet,. Recognized as one of only 20 international horn players to be included in the book 20th Century Brass Soloists, Hill appeared as a soloist and clinician throughout the U. S., Germany, France, and China, including numerous international, national, and regional brass and horn workshops and symposia.

Douglas Hill's extensive publications include Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance (2001), Extended Techniques for the Horn (1981/1996), scores of original compositions and pedagogical etude books, the educational DVD Hill on Horn, three solo recordings and a variety of orchestral and chamber ensemble recordings with the St. Louis Symphony, Aspen Festival Orchestra, and the Madison Symphony. The double CD; Thoughtful Wanderings: Compositions by Douglas Hill, features alumni, faculty, students, and staff of the UW School of Music performing over two hours of Hill’s varied compositions.

Emeritus Professor Hill has served on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory, Aspen Music School, Conservatories of Music in Beijing and Shanghai, for the Asian Youth Orchestra, Wilkes College, University of South Florida, Sarasota Music Festival, Yale Summer School at Norfolk, the Orford Music Festival in Canada, and at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp. He served as the Wind and Brass Adjudicator and Coach for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and has served numerous times on the adjudication panels for the Fischoff and the Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, as well as the Toulon (France) International Solo Horn Competition.

An expert in El Sistema philosophy and implementation, hornist Rachel Hockenberry completed the prestigious Sistema Fellowship in 2013 at the New England Conservatory of Music. After working closely with El Sistema programs in Cincinnati and Boston, Rachel was the founding director of Kentucky's first El Sistemaprogram, North Limestone MusicWorks. Rachel has worked with brass students in El Sistema programs in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, and Austin, and throughout Venezuela (Caracas, Barquisimeto, Carora and Santa Rosa). She composed her doctoral dissertation on teaching beginning hornplayers in an El Sistema setting.

Rachel earned her bachelor of music from James Madison University with Dr. Abigail Pack. She received her masters and doctoral degrees in horn performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where she studied with Randy Gardner, Liz Freimuth, Duane Dugger and Tom Sherwood. While living in the Cincinnati Tristate Area, Rachel performed with the Columbus (OH), Evansville, Richmond (IN), Kentucky, Lima, Blue Ash/Montgomery, and Ohio Valley symphonies, Orchestra Kentucky, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the Queen City Chamber Opera. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2014, Rachel has performed with the Santa Barbara Symphony and numerous other ensembles. She also serves on faculty at Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and maintains a private horn studio. Rachel enjoys a multifaceted career as a performer, music educator, arts advocate and El Sistema consultant.

Christine Hoeffner is an attorney who plays French Horn with the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic, a volunteer group of lawyers and judges that performs in multiple venues each year.  For the past five years, the orchestra’s annual Walt Disney Concert Hall performance has generated funds for clinics providing free legal assistance to those in need. Ms. Hoeffner represents and advocates for government entities as well as private entities and individuals in employment litigation as an appellate specialist certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. She has been selected by the Los Angeles/San Francisco Daily Journal as one of the 100 "Top Women Litigators" in California and has been selected through peer recognition and independent research as one of the top 5% of attorneys in their field by the Los Angeles Magazine and Law & Politics, which titles these attorneys "Southern California Super Lawyers." She holds the highest personal rating an attorney can receive from Martindale-Hubbell, a nationally-recognized legal directory. For over twenty years she has also volunteered as a court approved mediator. Her Juris Doctor is from Loyola University of Chicago School of Law and her Bachelor of Science with honors is from the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the California State Bar and admitted to practice in all California courts, the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

Hornswoggle San Diego is a Horn Choir made up of fans of the horn of all ages. Hornswoggle has helped host and performed at the 2010, and 2014 Southwest Horn Conventions. Hornswoggle has also performed at the San Francisco horn convention. Hornswoggle performs locally at a variety of schools, churches and events.

Patrick Hughes serves as Associate Professor of Horn, Head of the Brass Wind and Percussion Division, and director of the award winning UT Horn Choir at the University of Texas at Austin. He enjoys an active performance career, playing principal with the Victoria Bach Festival and La Folia Austin Baroque (natural horn), and free-lancing with the Austin Symphony, Ballet, and Opera. He has also played with touring Musicals, and behind popular performers who frequent Austin, like Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin.  Mr. Hughes serves on the faculties of the Hot Springs Music Festival and the Kendall Betts Horn Camp and is a frequent guest lecturer/performer/teacher giving masterclasses and recitals across the US and abroad. At UT, he was recognized as an Outstanding Teacher of the Year. In May of 2013 he traveled to Australia to teach, perform recitals, and give the Australian Premier of his three latest compositions for horn choir at the Queensland and Sydney Conservatories of Music. Mr. Hughes also enjoys composing as well. Both Dancing on the Hill and From Hildegard were premiered at IHS International Symposia. Dancing on the Hill won an Honorable Mention award in the virutoso division of the International Horn Sociey's 2015 Composition Competition. His music is published through BrownWood Publishing. Hughes hosted the 2005 and 2014 Mid-South Regional Horn Workshops at the University of Texas, serves on the Reviewing Committee of the IHS Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Fund, and is a newly elected member to the IHS Advisory Council. 

Peter Iltis teaches applied horn at Gordon College, and has been on staff in the Department of Music since 1996. Dr. Iltis holds a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Kansas, and has served on the faculty of Gordon College for 30 years. Dr. Iltis performed as an occasional horn player with the Edmonton Symphony and Calgary Symphony orchestras while still in high school, and began his undergraduate training as a horn performance major at Indiana University.

Currently a full professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Dr. Iltis spent many years playing French horn in the Boston area as a freelance artist and held the principal horn position in the Lexington Symphony from 1998 to 2001. Dr. Iltis was diagnosed with embouchure dystonia in 2001, which ended his performing career, but has continued to sustain a successful horn studio at Gordon College. 

Combining his expertise in kinesiology with French horn pedagogy, Dr. Iltis serves as the medical and scientific issues editor for the Horn Call, the journal of the International Horn Society; he has published articles in Horn Call and in the journal Medical Problems of Performing Artists. His current research on embouchure dystonia focuses on the intersection between physiologic mechanisms and psychological correlates, such as performance anxiety. He has spoken on this topic at several universities and conservatories in the United States, and during his sabbatical in the fall of 2013, participated in research in Hannover, Germany at the Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine.

Dr. Katie Johnson is the Assistant Professor of Horn at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She excels as a flexible, thoughtful, and active performer of chamber music, solo repertoire, and orchestral literature.  In past years, Dr. Johnson has been selected to attend the Aspen Summer Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Kent/Blossom Music Festival in Kent, Ohio, and the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado.

As an orchestral musician, Katie has played with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, the New Philharmonic (Chicago, IL), the Illinois Symphony, the Beloit-Janesville Symphony and the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra. Katie has performed under the batons of such notable conductors as David Zinman, James Conlon, JoAnn Falletta, Dennis Russell Davies and Carl Topilow.

As a soloist, Katie took first place in the horn division of the Susan Slaughter Solo Brass Competition in 2012 and was invited to perform a recital at the 2015 International Horn Symposium featuring Ann Callaway’s large-scale work, Four Elements for horn and piano. Katie recently performed Dana Wilson’s Concerto for Horn and Wind Ensemble with the University of Tennessee Wind Ensemble.

Dr. Johnson completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012 under the direction of Professor Emeritus Douglas Hill and Professor Daniel Grabois.  While completing the Master of Music degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Katie worked closely with Professor Douglas Hill as a Bolz Fellow. Katie completed her undergraduate studies in music and political science at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana.

Barbara Jöstlein started her professional horn career in the Jerusalem Symphony as third/associate principal horn at the age of 20. She won the one year position upon recommendation from conductor Yoav Talmi, who heard her at the San Diego symphony 3rd horn audition, where she was runner up at age 19. Barbara studied with Julie Landsman, former principal horn of the Met Opera, where she received a full scholarship for her undergraduate degree at Juilliard.

During her senior year, she won the assistant horn job of the Met at age 22. A year later, she won the 4th horn job at the Met, with Julie as her principal- a job she still holds. During her time at the Met, she has made many commercial, movie, and popular music recordings. She has recorded with singers such as Sting, Tony Bennett, Anna Netrebko, Placido Domingo, as well as many others. She has also been very involved with the three Met Brass CD recordings that were produced by Met principal trumpet David Krauss and third horn Javier Gandara.

During the summers off, she spends time with her husband and three children in Orange County, playing with the San Diego Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and going to Disneyland. Her brother, Thomas Jöstlein is associate principal horn of the St.Louis symphony, and they have recently performed together in St.Louis with his orchestra. 

Barbara teaches Pre-college at Manhattan School and college age at Bard Conservatory. Originally from Chicago, where she primarily studied with Nancy Fako, and  with Philip Farkas, she has made California her summer home, and hopes to return as often as possible.

Nancy Joy received a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Wittenberg University School of Music in Springfield, Ohio, studying with Dr. Richard Chenoweth and then completed a Master of Music in Horn Performance at New Mexico State University, studying with Dr. Warner Hutchison.  Nancy is currently in her eighteenth year as Horn Professor at New Mexico State University.  In her first year at NMSU, Nancy created a horn choir, called the “NMSU Corno Crew” which is very active in premiering new works.  The NMSU Horn Choir was invited to be a premier performing ensemble at the following International Horn Society (IHS) Symposiums: 1999 in Athens, GA., the 2000 Symposium in Beijing, China; the 2005 Symposium in Tuscaloosa, AL; and the 2008 Symposium in Denver, CO.

Ms. Joy is Principal Horn of the Las Cruces Symphony at NMSU, and Second Horn of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra and El Paso Opera Company.  Recent solo performances include the performances locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Most recently, Nancy performed as a contributing artist at the Southwest Horn Symposium in San Diego CA, in May 2010 and June 2014. She also performed at the Southwest Horn Conference in Phoenix, AZ in January 2012. Ms. Joy commissioned and performed the world premiere of “South Africa” by Matthew Saunders for Horn & Marimba at the 41st Annual International Horn Symposium in Macomb, IL.  Nancy has appeared as a guest artist at the International Horn Symposiums (IHS) in Rochester, NY; Kansas City, MO.; Tuscaloosa, AL.; Capetown, South Africa; Denver, CO; Macomb, Illinois; Brisbane, Australia; and San Francisco, CA; Denton, TX;  in Memphis, TN and will be performing at the 2014 IHS Symposium in London, England. Ms. Joy was elected from the IHS membership as a member of the Advisory Council and has completed her two terms of office.  She is currently the International Horn Society’s International Symposium Coordinator.

Nancy was the Featured Guest Artist at the International Women’s Brass Conference (IWBC) “Holiday Brass” in Baltimore, MD in November 2011 and a contributing guest artist at the IWBC symposium in June 2012 and June 2014.  At IWBC 2012, Ms. Joy commissioned and performed the world premier of “Trio for Flute, Horn and Piano, Op. 54” by Linda Holland with Nancy’s trio, entitled Allura.  She also performed with Spanish Brass Luur Metales and taught at the Spanish Brass Symposium (SBALZ) in Alzira, Spain in 2012 and 2013 and will be returning to SBALZ during the summer of 2015.

Ms. Joy has served as a featured clinician at several NMMEA All-State Music Festival giving clinics on horn pedagogy.  She is the owner of the “Horn of Joy” music studio teaching private lessons to beginning horn students through high school level and is a requested clinician and solo performer in the southwest.  Nancy is also on the board of directors for the Interactive Video Audition Service International (IVASI) and presents clinics and demonstrations internationally for this company, along with giving Breathing Gym Clinics in Germany, South Africa, and Colombia and all over the USA.

Daniel Katzen joined the University of Arizona Music faculty after 29 years as Second Horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he held from 1979-2008. Prof. Katzen’s career has taken him to 25 U.S. states and 22 foreign countries on five continents to perform over 5000 concerts. He can be heard in concert at his annual UA solo and chamber recitals, various orchestral appearances around the US and on his dozens of CDs with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras, Empire Brass and other orchestral and chamber ensembles. His Bach Suites for ‘Cello Solo vol. 1 (II & VI) CD has sold out of its first printing, with volume 2 (Suites I & IV) released in April, 2014.

In addition to his tenure in the BSO, Prof. Katzen was a faculty member at Boston University College of Fine Arts, New England Conservatory and Tanglewood Music Center in the East, and California Institute of the Arts and University of California/Irvine School of Music in the West. His previous orchestral affiliations include Fourth Horn with the San Diego Symphony, Second Horn in the Grant Park (Chicago) and Phoenix Symphonies and the Israel Chamber Ensemble, and extra horn with the Chicago Symphony and the Munich, Los Angeles and Rochester Philharmonics. He can also be heard on the soundtracks of more than two dozen motion pictures, including E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Twister and Jumanji. Prof. Katzen concertizes on a customized horn made for him in 1980 by Dan Rauch.

Karl Kemm earned a bachelor's degree at the University of New Mexico. He studied music history and performance practice at the University of New Hampshire for a master's degree under the guidance of Keith Polk and the renowned music iconography pioneer Mary Rasmussen. In 1989 he joined the Air Force Band at Travis AFB and also studied under Dave Krehbiel. After 1994 he remained associated with the Air Force through the Texas Air National Guard Band from which he retired in 2011. He served as adjunct faculty at Texas Woman's University from 1998 to 2001. Currently he freelances and clinics as an orchestral and early music natural horn player throughout Texas and theneighboring states. Motivated by the encouragement of Mary Rasmussen, he continues to methodically collect and study various horns from around the world with a keen interest in iconography. At Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas he teaches horn and Introduction to the Humanities.

Young-Yul Kim 김영률, graduated of Seoul High School of Arts and Seoul National University, earned his Master of Music degree from Temple University and the Doctor of Musical Arts as well as the Performer's Certificate from Eastman School of Music. As a Principal Hornist, he toured Germany with the Eastman Philharmonia, and the U.S. and Canada with the Eastman Wind Ensemble and Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Mr. Kim has performed in recitals in Philadelphia, Rochester, Seoul, Taejeon. In May 1999, he was invited to give a recital by the International Horn Society's annual symposium which was held at Georgia State University. In July 2000, he received Punto Award at the 32nd IHS annual symposium held at Beijing, China. Mr. Kim has also appeared as a soloist with KBS Symphony, Seoul Chamber Orchestra, Pusan Philharmonic, Seoul Symphony, Seoul Art Orchestra among others and was invited as concerto soloist by the Seoul Arts Center Orchestra Festival in 1992, 1995, 1999, 2001, and 2011.

He was also invited as a soloist for the Japan Horn Society's 2002 Horn Festival which was held at Hokkaido. 

He has also served as Co-principal Horn of the KBS Symphony, as Acting -principal of Puchon Philharmonic and is currently a member of Korean Aulos Wind Quintet and Advisory Council of IHS and Professor of College of Music at Seoul National University where he has been teaching horn and leading the SNU Wind Ensemble and Horn Ensemble since 1994. 

His teachers are include Hong-Kyun Shin, Randy Gardner, Daniel Williams, Mason Jones, Joe de Angelis, & Verne Reynolds. 

W. Peter Kurau, Professor of Horn, Director of the Eastman Horn Choir, and hornist with Eastman Brass, was appointed in 1995 to the full-time faculty at the Eastman School of Music, succeeding Verne Reynolds. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Missouri-Columbia, SUNY-Geneseo, Roberts Wesleyan College, Houghton College, and Nazareth College.

In September 2004, he was appointed Principal Horn of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, having previously served as Assistant Principal/Acting Principal Horn (1983-95) and as Acting Assistant Principal Horn (2002-2004).

A prizewinner in the Heldenleben International Horn Competition and a recipient of an I.T.T. International Fellowship and numerous faculty merit and development awards, he served as an Artistic Ambassador for the United States Information Agency, presenting recitals and master classes in Serbia-Montenegro, Kazakstan, Macedonia, and Syria during September 1997. Active as a soloist, chamber musician, and clinician (the latter for Conn/Selmer), he has appeared in these capacities at conventions of the International Horn Society, International Trumpet Guild, College Music Society, Music Educator’s National Conference, New York State School Music Association, Music Teacher’s National Association, National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors, Southeast Horn Workshop, Mid-South Horn Workshop, Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, Eastman/Hamamatsu Seminar, Matsumoto Horn Seminar, South Korean Horn Workshop, the 2002 German Brass Academy and Sauerland Festival, Lieksa (Finland) Brass Festival, and leading universities throughout the United States and Europe (including the Hochschule für Musik/Detmold, the Sibelius Academy, the Helsinki Scandia, and the Lahti Conservatory), as well as at the Bravo! Colorado Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Chautauqua Festival, Orford Festival, Skaneateles Festival, Fortissimo!, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Monteux School, Eastern Music Festival, Kendall Betts Horn Camp, Texas Music Festival, and the International Festival Institute at Round Top (TX).

Active within the International Horn Society, having served on its Advisory Council for eight years and as Vice-President, Secretary-Treasurer, Pedagogy Editor and member of the Editorial Board for the Horn Call, he hosted the 29th Annual International Horn Workshop, held in 1997 at the Eastman School. He has been active in commissioning and premiering new works for horn, including compositions by noted American composers Verne Reynolds, John Cheetham, Mark Shultz, Yehudi Wyner, Sydney Hodkinson, and James Willey, and in 1991 appeared as soloist in the first modern performance of the then recently discovered and reconstructed version of the Mozart Rondo, K.371 for horn and orchestra.

He received his formal musical education at the Eastman School, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal College of Music, University of Connecticut, and Florida State University, where his principal teachers were Verne Reynolds, David Cripps, William Capps, and Horace Fitzpatrick (natural horn). 

Equally comfortable in both solo and orchestral settings, hornist Austin Larson has received top honors in many major solo competitions, most notably First Prize in both the International Horn Society Premier Soloist Competition and the International Horn Competition of America. Austin has also appeared as a soloist at many prestigious venues, including the Music For All Symposium, twice on Wisconsin Public Radio, and an appearance on a Featured Artist Recital at the 2012 International Horn Symposium in Denton. Austin joined the Colorado Symphony in Denver as Assistant Principal/Utility Horn in September 2014 and has previously held the Second Horn position with Symphony in C in addition to summer positions with the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland and Spoleto Festival Orchestra USA. Originally from Neenah, Wisconsin, Austin holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and the Curtis Institute of Music and his primary teachers include Jennifer Montone, Jeffrey Lang, Randy Gardner, Bruce Atwell, and Donald Krause.

Stephen Lawson has been a faculty member at Marshall University since 2002, teaching horn lessons, music theory and music education courses. Additionally, he has served as the interim chair of the Department of Music and directed the MU Wind Symphony. He is a member of the Maelzel Woodwind Quintet, which performs on historical instruments of the Classical period, Kingsbury Woodwind Quintet, and MU Faculty Brass Quintet. Lawson is a member of the Huntington Symphony Orchestra and, has performed with the Ohio Valley Symphony and the West Virginia Symphony, River Cities Symphony and Seneca Chamber Orchestra.

From 1991-2002, Lawson taught at Minot State University in Minot. From 1995-1998, Lawson was the music director and conductor of the Minot Symphony Orchestra. He has served as principal horn of the Minot Symphony and principal trumpet of the Bismarck Symphony. He was founder and director of the Audubon Chamber Ensemble and was directed the Ambassador Brass Quintet. 

Lawson has served on the faculties of Western Carolina University, Albion College and Lansing Community College and performed as a horn player with the Asheville Symphony (NC), Greater Lansing Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony and Flint Symphony (MI) and the Adirondack Symphony (NY). He has maintained an active schedule of adjudication, clinics and master classes, chamber music and solo recital performances. Many of Lawson’s recital appearances have involved the performance practices on historical horns and he has appeared at International Horn Society and regional horn workshops performing and teaching aspects of historical horn performance.

Jonathan Guy Lewis is a graduate from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He has worked extensively as an actor, writer and director for over twenty years, and has won a number of awards for his work. As an actor he has worked at the Royal National Theatre, in Rep, Fringe, and The West End, notably in Stephen Daldry’s production of ‘An Inspector Calls,’ at The Aldwych and at The Haymarket in Aaron Sorkin’s ‘A Few Good Men’ opposite Rob Lowe, the European Premieres of Andrew Bovell’s ‘Speaking In Tongues’, and Stephen Sewell’s ‘Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America’.  More recent theatre work includes Off West End, Hampstead, Broadway and LA runs of ‘I Found My Horn’ and Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s ‘A View From The Bridge’. On TV he is perhaps best remembered for his roles as Station Commander Chris Hammond in 3 series of London’s Burning and as Sgt Chris McCleod in 2 series of Soldier, Soldier, as well as Ian Bentley in Coronation St. Most recently on TV, he was seen in the series, Endeavour for ITV and Skins for Chanel 4.

Jonathan’s first play as a writer, Our Boys won The Writers’ Guild Award. TAPS new Television Writer Of The Year, and he was nominated for the The Lloyds Bank Playwright Of The Year. It was revived in a major West end production in the autumn of 2012. He is currently working on a trilogy for the theatre entitled ‘Education, Education, Education’.

A native of Rhode Island, Marie Lickwar is currently Acting 2nd Horn with the Hawaii Symphony. Since being in Honolulu, she has performed with Chamber Music Hawaii and Hawaii Pops.  Ms. Lickwar has also performed at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, the Houston Symphony, and the Rochester Philharmonic. While studying in Los Angeles, she worked in the motion picture recording industry, doing session work. Ms. Lickwar earned a Masters in Music from the Eastman School of Music and Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of New Hampshire. She has participated in Pacific Music Festival in Japan (2004) and the International Horn Society Workshop with the Eastman Horn Choir in Lahti, Finland (2002).

While living in Houston, Ms. Lickwar was a member of the Houston Brass Band, and performed with the professional ensembles of the Houston area. In addition, she maintained a full studio and ran the Houston Horn Camp for, a unique program for middle and high school students during the summer. In Honolulu, Ms. Lickwar continues to teach students of all ages.

Frank Lloyd

Los Angeles Horn Trio

Laurence Lowe has established an international reputation as a horn soloist, composer, orchestral player, and teacher. Recent compositions include a sonata for violin and piano and two sonatas for horn and piano (both award winners in the International Horn Society Composition Contest ). His music has been performed at international symposia for horn, clarinet, and double reeds in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has been a soloist at ten international horn workshops sponsored by the International Horn Society. He is the only horn teacher to have two past students win the International Horn Competition of America. Mr. Lowe has performed numerous recitals at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Orchestral and chamber music engagements have taken him to Australia, The United Kingdom, Canada, Europe, the Far East, Brazil, Mexico, Carnegie Hall, and the Blossom Festival. His solo CD Four American Sonatas for Horn and Piano includes the first recording of the Crawford Gates Sonata for Horn and Piano, the first recording of the entire Thomas Beversdorf Sonata for Horn and Piano, and important sonatas by Halsey Stevens and Alec Wilder. A review of the CD in The Horn Call said, "This disc is a must for everyone’s library-superb artistry here by both hornist and pianist in a setting of excellent repertoire". He is professor of horn at Brigham Young University.

Dr. Heidi Lucas is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Horn at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She holds degrees from the Crane School of Music-SUNY Potsdam (B.M.), the Eastman School of Music (M.M), and the University of Georgia (D.M.A). Her orchestral experience includes the Louisiana Philharmonic, Memphis Symphony, Lancaster Philharmonic, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Cobb Symphony Orchestra, Columbus (GA) Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Pops Orchestra, Pensacola Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, Meridian Symphony, Pensacola Opera Orchestra, Mobile Opera Orchestra, and the Mobile Symphony, Altoona Symphony, and Johnstown Symphony. She is also principal horn of the Tradewinds, the recording ensemble for Carl Fischer's wind band publications.

In addition to extensive teaching and chamber music experience including residencies and tours throughout the United States, England, Brazil, Germany, Austria, and Panama, Dr. Lucas is currently a member of the Hoodlebug Brass Quintet and IUP Faculty Wind Quintet, as well as Eastern Standard, the Crosswinds, and the Blenheim Brass Trio. She is active in promoting new music and has been part of commissioning projects for over 15 new works that feature the horn. Summer teaching/performing engagements include positions with the Ash Lawn Opera Company (Virginia), Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (Michigan), Saarburger Serenaden Music Festival (Germany), the Alfredo Saint Malo Festival (Panama), and the International Fellowship of Conductors, Composers and Collaborators (IFC3) in Oregon.  Dr. Lucas has performed on programs at the Northeast Regional Tuba and Euphonium Conference in Ithaca in April of 2015, 2014 International Horn Symposium in London, England, 2014 International Tuba/Euphonium Conference (ITEC) in Bloomington, IN, 2013 International Horn Symposium in Memphis, TN, 2012 International Tuba/Euphonium Conference (ITEC) in Linz, Austria, 2012 International Horn Symposium in Denton, TX, and the 2012 Mid-South Horn Workshop in Conway, AR, as well as part of several Southeast Horn Workshops.  She will perform at the 2015 International Horn Symposium in Los Angeles in August. She has had several publications, including reviews in the Horn Call and articles in the Grove Dictionary of American Music. Dr. Lucas can be heard on the New York Philomusica’s 2008 recording of Haydn’s L’isola Disabitata, the Keystone Winds’ upcoming album of the works of Fisher Tull, and Centaur Records’ The Voice of the Coelecanth: Music of William Bergsma, which was released in February of 2015. 

Johanna Lundy is the principal horn of the Tucson Symphony, a position she has held since 2006. She has received critical acclaim for her "robust sound" and her "breathtaking" and "extraordinary" performances. The Green Valley News hailed her Tucson Symphony solo debut as "the highest level of professional musicianship. Every attack was pure, controlled and perfect. [Lundy] left the audience in a state of near-euphoria."

In 2010, Ms. Lundy was named one of Tucson's 40 under 40 by the Arizona Daily Star. As a soloist and recitalist, Ms. Lundy has appeared with the Tucson Symphony, the Arizona Symphonic Winds, the Tucson Chamber Artists, the University of Arizona Guest Artist Series, and the St. Andrew’s Bach Society. Additionally, Ms. Lundy is the principal horn of the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra and has participated in the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland.

Before joining the TSO, Ms. Lundy was an active freelancer in the Boston area, where she performed with the Albany and New Hampshire Symphonies and the Boston Philharmonic. Ms. Lundy attended the Aspen Music Festival as a fellowship recipient for five summers, where she appeared as soloist in 2005.  

Ms. Lundy currently maintains a private teaching studio in Tucson and is on the faculty at Pima Community College. She holds a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory and principal teachers include Richard Deane, Roland Pandolfi, Richard Sebring, James Sommerville, and John Zirbel.

Eldon Matlick is Professor of Horn at the University of Oklahoma School of Music, performing in both the Oklahoma Wind and Brass Quintets. He is Principal Hornist of the Norman Philharmonic and recently completed a 26 year tenure as Principal Hornist with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra. He earned a BME from Eastern Kentucky University and holds graduate degrees from Indiana University.  At Indiana, he studied with Philip Farkas and Meir Rimon. He has repeatedly been a featured principal wind player and soloist with the Classical Musical Festival held in Eisenstadt, Austria.  He has twice been a featured soloist with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, performing Robert Schumann's 'Concertstucke for Four Horns, and Ken Fuch's 'Summer Banner' for horn and chamber orchestra.  He has also appeared as a soloist with several other orchestras across the country.

No stranger to IHS workshops, he has appeared as a soloist in 10 IHS Symposia, as well at many regional workshops as a featured soloist and clinician. He also maintains an active presence with yearly tours to various locales throughout the U.S.

Mr. Matlick has issued two compact discs on the Mark Masters label.  Bavarian Horn and The French Connection feature previously unrecorded material from German/Austrian and French/Belgium composers.  Both offer premier recordings of works known and unknown.  In addition, he appears on the Oklahoma Wind Quintet's recording A Christmas Delight!  This was the first recording of seasonal music for wind quintet.  In 1995, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic released A Time of Healing, featuring music from the nationally televised Murrah Building Bombing Memorial Service.

A respected pedagogue, Professor Matlick has written a series of articles about brass and horn pedagogy for the Instrumentalist magazine.  His devotion to the medium of horn ensemble music is evidenced by the extensive videos he has posted with the University of Oklahoma Hornsemble on YouTube. He is an Artist/Clinician for Conn-Selmer Instruments.

Staff Sergeant Becky McLaughlin is a native of Columbia, Maryland. She is a graduate of Indiana University, where she earned her Bachelor of Music degree in Education in 2010 from the Jacobs School of Music. Prior to joining The U.S. Army Field Band, SSG McLaughlin performed with the Disneyland All-American College Band under the direction of Dr. Ron McCurdy, the National Collegiate Wind Ensemble under H. Robert Reynolds, and with the 8th Army Band in Yongsan, Korea. SSG McLaughlin is a member of the Chamber Brass. Her most notable teachers include Bruce Moore and Richard Seraphinoff.

The Mill Ave Chamber Players (MACP) is a professional chamber music ensemble based in Phoenix, Arizona, formed in 2007 with an entrepreneurial grant from Arizona State University. With a woodwind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon) as the core ensemble, the Mill Ave Chamber Players often collaborates with other musicians to offer a wide range of programming.

In the 2014-2015 season, the Mill Ave Chamber Players is celebrating its second season as the presenting artists at the Peoria Center for the Performing Arts, and will begin its fifth season of morning chamber music concerts at the United Church of Sun City (AZ). In addition MACP is launching a new series at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Phoenix and Cicero Preparatory Academy and releasing their first CD in September.

Embarking on its eighth season, the Mill Ave Chamber Players seeks to strengthen communities by presenting quality chamber music performances across the Valley. For the second consecutive year, MACP received the Performing Arts Partnership Grant from the City of Glendale (AZ) to continue the 25 year-old “Live at the Library” series at the Glendale Public Library . Previously, MACP was  awarded a grant from the City of Phoenix to participate in ARTSpace, an after school community arts program. Additionally, MACP has performed for the students of Rosie’s House: A Music Academy for Children, Phoenix Children’s First Academy and has partnered with the West Valley Symphony to perform for over 1000 students in the Peoria Unified School District. The Mill Ave Chamber Players has held residencies at the University of the Pacific (CA), Glendale Community College, and Paradise Valley Community College and held its first chamber music camp in the summer of 2014.

Featured performances of Mill Ave Chamber Players include a world premiere of John Steinmetz’s dectet with the composer and faculty at the University of the Pacific, the International CALA (Celebración Artística de las Américas) Festival, the Southwest Season Ticket, and the Southwest Horn Conference where, in collaboration with the Phoenix Chamber Brass, gave the US Premiere of Navajo Mandala by Kerry Turner.

Monica Sauer Anthony, Flute
Nik Flickinger, Oboe
Erin Finkelstein, Clarinet
Peter Blandino, Bassoon
Rose French, Horn

Originally from Colorado, Staff Sergeant J.G. Miller holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California, a Master of Music degree from the University of Arizona, and a Bachelor of Music Performance and Music Education degree from the Eastman School of Music. His teachers include Peter Kurau, James Thatcher, Daniel Katzen, and Kendall Betts. SSG Miller has performed with such groups as The Who, Mariachi del Sol de Mexico, La Sinfonica Nacional De Las America, and Los Angeles area studio orchestras on several major motion picture scores. He was also a performer at the "12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief" at Madison Square Garden. SSG Miller has taught as a high school band director and as a clinician at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp and the Colburn Horn Camp. He has also trained as a machinist and welder while working for Lawson Horns, and writes and arranges as co-founder of Veritas Musica Publishing.

MirrorImage, acclaimed horn duo of Lisa Bontrager and Michelle Stebleton, has been featured in international venues and on the recordings that they spearheaded, Harambee: The Horn Music of Paul Basler, and their title album, MirrorImage at the Opera, both released on the MSR Classics label.  Multifaceted musicians and professional teachers, they formed MirrorImage in order to offer versatile programming in solo, chamber and educational settings; through their outreach, they have performed many recitals throughout the U.S., Europe, and South America, and double concerti with several orchestras.  Frequent grant recipients; they have commissioned many works from leading composers.  Their perfectly blended sound and style comes from the training they received at the University of Michigan; both are products of the famous Louis J. Stout horn studio.

Modern Brass Quintet

Peggy Moran, whose playing has been called “lyrically beautiful” (composer Michael Colgrass), is Assistant Professor of Horn at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is a member of the Zephyr Winds faculty woodwind quintet and the Redbud Brass faculty brass quintet. Dr. Moran maintains an active performance career, having performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Dayton Philharmonic, and the Louisville Orchestra. She has performed guest solo and chamber recitals at Franklin College, on the Young Artist Series at IUPUI, and on the UCO Faculty Artist Series and she regularly worked in the recording studios in Indianapolis.

Dr. Moran has performed at the International Horn Society Conference and the International Women’s Brass Conference. She is on the staff and the scholarship committee at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp. 

Dr. Moran received her DM in Horn Performance and Literature from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she also received an MM and Performer's Diploma in Horn.  Dr. Moran received her BA from the University of Chicago, with a thesis in Music Theory.  Her primary teachers have been Jeff Nelsen, Michael Hatfield, Richard Seraphinoff, and Ethel Merker.

Kristy Morrell is a faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music, and the Colburn School of Performing Arts. She has been a member of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for nearly two decades and performs frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Opera, Pasadena Symphony, Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Bach Festival. Active also as a soloist, chamber musician, and clinician, she has appeared at numerous professional symposia, as well as at leading universities. She is also a respected recording artist, performing on numerous motion pictures, television soundtracks and records.
Kristy has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California, where she also received her Master of Music. She received a Bachelor of Music and a Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. She was the First Place winner of the International Horn Society solo competition, as well as the First Place winner of the solo competition at the International Women's Brass Conference.
She resides in Southern California with her husband Steve, daughter Libby, and son, Russell.

Jack Munnecom (b. 1976) studied at the Conservatory Maastricht in the hornclass of Professor Erich Penzel, Willy Bessems and Will Sanders, where he earned his degrees in Music Performance and Teaching in 2004. Jack followed masterclasses with Hermann Baumann, Radovan Vlatkovic, Jacob Slagter, Will Sanders, Peter Damm and William Capps.
In 2008, he was 1st prize winner at the International Soloist and Ensemble Contest in Kerkrade (NL).

Jack Munnecom played in the National Youth Orchestra (NL), the Bayreuth Festival Youth Orchestra (Ger) and the European Youth Wind Orchestra. He has held principal horn positions at the Royal Dutch Orchestra Thorn (NL), Symphonic Impulse (NL) and the Netherlands Students Orchestra (NL). As a substitute hornplayer he played with the New York Pops Orchestra (USA), the Limburg Chamber Orchestra (NL) and the RWE Orchestra Cologne (Ger). He has performed in famous concerthalls worldwide: the Concertgebouw Amsterdam (NL), Carnegie Hall New York (USA), Philharmonie Berlin (Ger), Alte Oper Frankfurt (Ger), Semperoper Dresden (Ger), Lucerne Concert Hall (CH) and the Bayreuth Festival Hall (Ger).

Currently, Jack is principal horn with TransAtlantic Brass (USA) and the Philips Symphony Orchestra (NL). Next to this, he works as a PhD researcher at the University if Utrecht (NL).

James Naigus (b. 1987), currently a DMA candidate in horn at the University of Iowa, is a performer and composer of broadening recognition. He currently studies horn with Jeffrey Agrell, studied horn and composition with Paul Basler at the University of Florida during his masters degree, and while attending the University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree studied with Soren Hermansson, Bryan Kennedy, and Adam Unsworth. Naigus has been a guest clinician and composer-in-residence at American Horn Quartet founder David Johnson's summer workshop in Daytona Beach for several years. He has played with the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, Valdosta Symphony Orchestra, Ocala Symphony Orchestra, and soloed (on horn) with many regional professional choirs in Florida. He has also performed on recitals at the 2013 Midwest Horn Workshop, the 2013 and 2014 Southeast Horn Workshops, and the 2013 International Horn Symposium. Naigus' compositions have been performed throughout the United States and beyond, with enthusiastic reception and rave review. In 2013 he was the Composer-in-Residence at the Southeast Horn Workshop in Richmond, VA. In 2009 he was awarded an honorable mention award in the International Horn Society Composition Contest, selected from 85 entries spread over 16 nations. He is currently published by RM Williams Publishing and Veritas Musica Publishing.

Airman First Class Daniel Nebel joined the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA in 2013. In addition to performing with the concert band, he also is a member of the Golden West Wind Quintet and the Chamber Players. Prior to joining the Air Force he completed a Bachelor's degree and Performer's Certificate at the Eastman School of Music, a Master's Degree form Wichita State University, and began a doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado. Nebel served as the third/associate principal horn of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra an principal horn of the Wichita Grand Opera for three years and has also performed with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, North State Symphony, Ohio Light Opera, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, and New York String Orchestra Seminar. He is also a church organist, most recently serving as organist for St. Giles Episcopal Church in Moraga, CA.

Originally from a small town in Wisconsin, Todd Niesen began his journey with the horn in seventh grade when he signed up for band class.  Having played guitar since he was 8, when the director asked Todd what instrument he’d like to play, he naturally said guitar.  After the jeers and laughter died down, the director suggested the French Horn instead.  He continued to play both all through high school and college, straddling the two worlds of Jazz/Rock and Classical.

He attended Indiana University in 1982, where he studied Horn with Myron Bloom and Michael Hatfield, and studied jazz with Dominic Spera and David Baker.  He performed Baker’s Suite for French Horn and Jazz Combo at his senior recital.

After a short stint as a cruise ship musician and a wedding videographer, Todd moved to Los Angeles and began a career in post production sound.  As his film credits increased (The Wonder Years, Weird Science, Judging Amy, etc.), time on the horn decreased, and by 1990 he stopped playing completely.

22 years later, in 2012, a real life Mr. Holland’s Opus event occurred in his home town of Oconomowoc Wisconsin.  A reunion concert was being organized to honor the 12 years Mr. Hoefer directed the high school Wind Symphony.  Students (now in their 40’s and 50’s) who had played under “Buz” Hoefer travelled from as far away as Sydney Australia for the chance to be under his baton once more. They had just under a year to bring their playing level up to the point where a full two hour concert would be possible.  According to Todd, “When I first unpacked my horn after all this time, the valves were stuck and the sounds coming out of the bell were not the joyful sounds I remembered. I couldn’t believe I was ever good at this!”

After the concert, Todd continued to play (he says it was way too much work getting to that point to just hang it up again). He plays in a few groups in Los Angeles, and has formed the “Thursday Horn Club”; open to anyone interested in playing Horn Quartets on Thursday mornings.

He’s been nominated for 4 Emmys and won 2 Golden Reels for sound editing.  Recent credits include Orange is the New Black, The New Girl, Mad Men, and Scorpion.  He lives in Burbank with his wife, Elise and can’t wait to adopt another dog.

Eric Overholt has enjoyed tremendous success as an orchestral horn player throughout the United States. Formerly Associate Principal Horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 2007 through 2014, he came to LA having held the position of Acting Associate Principal Horn in both the Cincinnati and Houston Symphonies. He has also been Principal Horn of the Louisville Orchestra, Savannah Symphony, and the Glimmerglass Opera Orchestra.

In addition to these full-time roles, he has enjoyed performing for many motion picture and television soundtracks such as Avatar, Toy Story 3, and Spider-Man 2 among others. He has also performed as a guest in horn sections around the country. Most notably, he has performed with The Cleveland Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Other notable engagements include performing as guest Principal Horn with both the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Phoenix Symphony.

Eric received a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School in New York where he studied with acclaimed horn instructor and performer Julie Landsman, former Principal Horn with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Baylor University in Texas. He has also studied with Richard King, former Principal Horn of The Cleveland Orchestra, both as part of the Kent/Blossom Music Festival and privately.

Eric's performing career was interrupted in 2013 when he was diagnosed with a debilitating neurological condition known as Focal Dystonia. Since that time, he has been working toward recovery through retraining with Jan Kagarice, former instructor of trombone at the Univerisity of North Texas, and Bill Plake, esteemed Los Angeles-area Alexader Technique instructor and jazz saxophonist. He continues to work daily toward playing health and wellness and has learned much along the way to help horn players of all ages and ability levels. He looks forward to resuming his playing career in the near future while devoting much of his time to bringing these ideas of wellness to the broader horn-playing, brass-playing, and instrumental music communities.

Eric has always tried to maintain an active private studio, teaching students of all ages from middle school through professional levels. He enjoys spending nights outside with binoculars or a telescope exploring the beauty of the heavens above. He currently lives in North Los Angeles with his wife Dedra and two kids, Rachel and Sam.

The Pacific Brass Ensemble is a group of professional musicians in Southern California with an extremely diverse repertoire that includes classical, contemporary, and, their specialty, film scores. This talented group has toured across California playing at many musical advocacy events and concerts.

The members of the Pacific Brass Ensemble work throughout Southern California as freelance musicians, performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, the motion picture studios and countless other engagements. As teachers, some of the ensemble’s members serve on the faculties at many schools, such as the Colburn School, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, Citrus College and Mt. San Antonio College.

Often performing with the Pacific Brass Ensemble are such renowned soloists as Tim Morrison, James Self, Boyd Hood, James Miller, Norman Pearson, James Thatcher, William Booth and Richard Todd.

Victor Pesavento is a Los Angeles based orchestrator, arranger and music copyist. Victor orchestrated for the TV mini-series documentary Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey and feature films Rio 2, Monsters University and The Croods. He arranged music for the 2011, 2013 and 2014 Academy Awards, for The Simpsons Take The Bowl at the Hollywood Bowl in 2014 and for Jessica Sanchez in the American Idol: Season 11 finals.

In 2013 and 2014, Victor traveled to Wellington, New Zealand, where he worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to record the scores to the second and third Hobbit films with Howard Shore and Peter Jackson. As a music librarian, he toured internationally with Star Wars In Concert (2009) and Barbara Streisand: Back to Brooklyn (2012-2013).

Victor has prepared music for over 350 motion pictures that have recently included Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Frozen, Life of Pi, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Avengers and How To Train Your Dragon 2.  Other credits include various installments of the Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and Hunger Games franchises, as well as Tony Award nominated musicals Catch Me If You Can and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

Victor’s concert arrangements have been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, performed by such notable artists and ensembles as Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LuPone and the National Symphony Orchestra, and have been featured in the Ghent Film Festival, the Tenerife International Film Music Festival and Hollywood In Vienna (Festival der Filmmusik).

Victor studied horn at Illinois State University under Dr. Joseph W. Neisler. During his tenure at I.S.U.,  he was principal horn of the Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra (Dr. Glenn Block, director) and co-principal horn of the Wind Symphony (Dr. Stephen K. Steele, director).  He has had the privilege of playing for or under the baton of many horn legends including Hermann Baumann, Barry Tuckwell, Dale Clevenger, Phil Myers, Gail Williams and Frank Lloyd.

Dan Phillips, Associate Professor of Horn and Theory, joined The University of Memphis faculty in the fall of 1999. In addition to teaching duties, he plays in the Memphis Brass Quintet, the Memphis Woodwind Quintet and the Birth of the Cool Ensemble, all faculty ensembles in residence at the University. He holds degrees in horn performance from Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame and has done additional graduate study at Indiana University. His background as a hornist includes extensive experience in solo, chamber ensemble, symphonic, studio and operatic idioms throughout the US and in Europe, Brazil and Japan. Mr. Phillips has a broad background as a conductor, arranger, and teacher. He served three terms as Visiting Professor at Southern Illinois University's campus in Nakajo, Japan; and in the spring of 1992, he was an Artist-in-Residence at the Latvian Music Academy in Riga. He is webmaster for The Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music and for the International Horn Society. 

Dr. Elizabeth Pfaffle is the Assistant Professor of Horn at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and an adjunct professor at Franklin & Marshall College.   She is active as a solo, chamber and orchestral performer.  In April of this year she travelled to Armenia to perform with an international orchestra commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.  Dr. Pfaffle has performed solo and chamber recitals at both Steinway and Carnegie Hall on numerous occasions with the WCU faculty woodwind quintet, Quintsylvania Winds.  Dr. Pfaffle serves as principal horn of the Allegro Chamber Orchestra in addition to performance experience with the Delaware Symphony, OperaDelaware, Pennsylvania Ballet Company, Lancaster Symphony, Reading Symphony, Allentown Symphony, Annapolis Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and both Akron, and Youngstown symphonies.  Dr. Pfaffle can be heard on the Mark Masters and MSR Classics labels.  A collaborative recording project with Dr. Jonathan Fowler featuring works by Alec Wilder entitled Wilder-ness for tuba and horn is scheduled for release this fall.  

Dr. Pfaffle received a master's in horn performance from the University of Akron and a doctorate from Indiana University. Upon completion of her Doctor of Music degree, Dr. Pfaffle served as a lecturer in the brass department at Indiana University for two years. She is currently the Assistant Director and theory instructor for the College Audition Preparation Program, an international summer workshop, at Indiana University. Her primary teachers include William Hoyt, Karen Schneider, Michael Hatfield and Richard Seraphinoff. 

Kolio Plachkov has been with the Colorado Symphony since 2011 as Associate Principal/Third French Horn. During the summers. Mr. Plachkov is a guest horn faculty at the  Rocky Ridge Music Center in Estes Park, Colorado. 

After graduating from the Idyllwild Arts Academy and studying horn with Kurt Snyder, Kolio received his Bachelor's Degree of Music from the Juilliard School where  he studied with Jennifer Montone, Principal horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Subsequently, Mr. Plachkov obtained the principal horn position with the Austin Symphony Orchestra while pursuing a full time Masters of Music degree at Rice University.
 
His solo and chamber music performances have been broadcast on NPR and CPR.  He has been featured with, Idyllwild Arts Orchestra, The Broadway Bach Ensemble, Colorado Chambers Players, Englewood Arts Concert Series, and Estes Park Music Festival.  Mr. Plachkov has been featured on “From the Top” and, has performed as part of the Bulgarian Concert Evenings in New York where he has performed at the Bulgarian Embassy for the Bulgarian General Council.  His scholarships and fellowships include, Tanglewood Music Center, the New World Symphony, New York String Seminar Orchestra, with performances in Carnegie Hall, Ozawa Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Disney Hall and The New World Center, among others.

Playdate was formed for the 47th International Horn Symposium, Los Angeles, as a celebration of the deep pool of female talent who contribute to today's LA horn sound. The ladies are members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach and Santa Barbara Symphonies. They are regular performers with Los Angeles Opera, Pacific and San Diego Symphonies, and they play Broadway shows in LA's major theaters, including the Pantages, the Ahmanson, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Collectively, the members of Playdate have logged thousands of hours recording for major motion pictures, television shows, record dates, and jingles. They teach at colleges and universities, including the USC Thornton School of Music, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, University of Redlands, and Asuza Pacific University.

In addition to making great music, the members of Playdate are also fabulously enthusiastic painters, gardeners, surfers, soccer players, beach goers, bookworms, hikers, kickboxers, yogis, swimmers, cooks, flower arrangers, and they are, of course, champion shoppers. Collectively they tend to 13 children, 11 dogs, 6 cats, 3 chickens, 31 horns, 40 music stands, 9 pianos, 5 conch shells, a duduk, a didgeridoo, and (gasp!) 6 Wagner tuben. They enjoy discussing these fine extracurriculars over a gin fizz and guacamole.

Playdate is: Sarah Bach, Katelyn Benedict, Laura Brenes, Kristy Morrell, Danielle Ondarza, Amy Jo Rhine, Amy Sanchez, and Stephanie Stetson. Together, the ladies hold 17 degrees and are united by the tutelage of Vince DeRosa and Verne Reynolds.

Ken Pope has had an eclectic career playing with artists from Lena Horne to Marilyn Horne. He performs regularly with the Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and scores of Broadway shows. He has performed as principal horn for Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Liza Minnelli, Jethro Tull, Andrea Bocelli, and many others. In addition to performing with the many orchestras throughout New England, he has toured with both the Boston Symphony and the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestras. He also has had the honor of playing at Carnegie Hall with 3 different orchestras in less than 10 days! Most recently the group ‘Orchestrotica’ was nominated for a Grammy.

His proudest accomplishments, though, are his 2 sets of twins. In his ‘spare’ time he runs Pope Instrument Repair – an internationally renowned customizing/building/and repair shop where he houses the worlds largest collection of French horns for sale.

Jeffrey Powers, Professor of Horn, Baylor University School of Music, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with “Honors in Music” from Austin College in Sherman, Texas and a Master of Music in Horn from The Cleveland Institute of Music. His major instructors were James London of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Albert Schmitter and Myron Bloom of The Cleveland Orchestra, and Roy Waas of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Having begun his career as second horn in The Hong Kong Philharmonic, Mr. Powers then served as second horn in the New Jersey Symphony, fourth horn in the Philharmonic of Caracas, Venezuela, and fourth horn and Wagner tuba in The Cleveland Orchestra. He then played Principal horn for sixteen years with the Royal Philharmonic of Flanders, Antwerp, Belgium and taught horn, chamber music, and transposition at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven, Belgium. Presently Mr. Powers is Principal Horn with the Waco Symphony Orchestra and the Abilene Philharmonic, and is a member of the Baylor Brass Quintet and the Baylor Woodwind Quintet. Mr. Powers is known for his clinics and masterclasses. He has five solo CD’s released to date. “Let All That Hath Breath Praise the Lord – Music of Praise for Horn”, “Into the 21st Century – Music for horn and piano by Baldwin, Bentzon, Pilss and Vignery”, “In a Lyrical way – Music for Horn and Piano by Flemish Masters” and "Steppingstones for Horn, Volume I and Volume II.

Tawnee Lynn Pumphrey, a french horn optimist built with all of the personality, heart, drive, passion and determination it takes to accomplish her goals.  Not just for her own career, but to offer other professionals the ability to pursue their own entrepreneurial career in the arts as well.  She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Horn Performance from the University of Arizona on a full scholarship, blessed to study with Keith Johnson and her Master's Degree in the same field from the University of Southern California where she studied with horn legends/mentors, Richard Todd and Vincent Derosa. Her career has brought her some great opportunities recording for film and television, including participating in the national tour of Shockwave, and appearing as the French Horn soloist in the Tony Award winning Broadway show Blast. She has had the privilege of traveling all around the world on tour with singing sensations Josh Groban, Chuck Negron and the IL Volo boys, playing featured horn parts in the show's on-stage orchestras. Tawnee has also contracted and toured with Mannheim Steamroller for several of their Christmas seasons. Aside from her experience as Orchestra Manager with Center Stage Opera for seven years, Mrs. Pumphrey was Principal French Horn for the orchestra. She has also enjoyed playing with The Long Beach Opera Company. With her invaluable experience of contracting and performing a number of productions, Tawnee now runs her own music contracting business with her husband Chris. Tawnee Lynn Music Contracting in its young career had the pleasure of contracting for artists such as IL Volo, Shahkar and Nathan Pacheco, sports teams such as the Anaheim Ducks, Entrepreneurial Events for People Helping People and also for several weddings, funerals, parties etc. Being a part of IHS 2015 LA has been a true honor.  From IHS 2000 China to now has been the journey of a lifetime. For more information on Tawnee herself, visit: www.tawneelynn.com

Quintessential Winds is a freelancing wind quintet in the Los Angeles area.  Originally under the mentorship of Dr. John Barcellona, flutist of the Westwood Wind Quintet, Quintessential Winds developed its national reputation. Recently, the quintet has worked with notable Los Angeles recording artists James Decker, Joseph Stone, and Larry Kaplan. Their ever-expanding repertoire includes standard wind quintet literature, dozens of transcriptions and arrangements, and the original compositions of many notable living composers including Adriana Verdie, Laura Kramer, Philip Sink, and film/world music composer Christopher Caliendo. The members of Quintessential Winds are also performing and teaching artists for the iVasi video conductor system.

In June of 2010 they were fellows of the Chamber Music Institute at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. While in attendance they worked with members of the Chiara String Quartet and the Moran Wind Quintet. The same year, the quintet was named a semi-finalist in the Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Colombia, Missouri. This competition hosted the nation's greatest upcoming chamber ensembles. In 2011, the Quintessential Winds were named winners of the Beverly Hills Audition and were subsequently featured in many concert series including The  Previews, by the Consortium of Southern California Chamber Music Presenters. The Los Angeles Times reviews The Previews as, "A much-sought-after opportunity for performers... the talent level is extremely high." Quintessential Winds is also featured on the Musician's Roster of the Los Angeles Arts Commission alongside groups such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Musica Angelica.

The quintet was invited to attend the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Fairbanks, Alaska as guest artists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In March of 2012, the quintet performed at the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) national conference in Tempe, AZ. Attending the conference, Quintessential Winds collaborated with saxophonist Yi Chen and composer Laura Kramer premiering the work Stray  for Woodwind Sextet. 

Quintessential Winds now maintains a regular schedule of performances for concert series throughout Southern California. Last October they performed for the Hemet Community Concert Association. They were reviewed as, “accomplished musicians and performers, adept at many different styles and comfortable relating to an audience..." www.quintessentialwinds.net

Jasper Rees is the author of A Devil to Play; One Man’s Yearlong Struggle with the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument. The book about his personal journey to relearn the French horn was first published in the UK as I Found My Horn, and soon became a one-man play which he co-wrote with the actor and playwright Jonathan Guy Lewis. The play, directed by Harry Burton, has been performed in theatres all over England, most recently at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End  Jasper is also an arts journalist who has written for many British newspapers including the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. Among his other books is Bred of Heaven: One Man’s Quest to Reclaim His Welsh Roots. He will never perform another horn solo in public.

Dr. Gary L. Reeves is a native of Muscatine, Iowa, U.S.A. Gary holds degrees from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, the University of South Dakota, and TheUniversity of Iowa. He has taught instrumental music in the public schools as well as at the university level. Dr. Reeves is an Associate Professor of Music at The University of South Dakota. He is a past member of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, and is Principal Horn for the Northwest Iowa Symphony Orchestra. Gary is an active horn soloist both on the modern instrument and on the natural horn. Dr. Reeves has served as Principal Hornist of the Chamber Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra for the Superior Music Festival in Michigan and currently is the hornist for the North Coast Chamber Players. He is an Artist Representative for the Conn-Selmer Division of Steinway, Inc. Gary has a compact disc recording from Mark Custom Recordings titled “A Twentieth Century Star-Spangled Horn Extravaganza”. The cd features music byAmerican composers including Samuel Adler and Leonard Bernstein, among others. The recording was funded by the South Dakota Arts Council. Gary is married to Dr. Deborah Check Reeves, Curator of Education and Woodwinds at the National Music Museum on the USD campus in Vermillion, SD.

Originally from Bellingham, WA, Emily Reppun received her performance degree from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in 2004 under the instruction of Dale Clevenger and Alice Render.  Emily holds regular positions with the Golden State Pops Orchestra, Long Beach Municipal Band and Orchestra Santa Monica. In the past year, she has performed as acting principal with the Monterey Symphony, Fresno Philharmonic, Redlands Symphony, and Opera San Luis Obispo, and in the horn sections of the Riverside County Philharmonic, San Bernardino Symphony, Long Beach Opera, Santa Barbara Festival Ballet, McCallum Theatre Concert Band, West Coast Music, Bruce Lofgren Jazz Orchestra, Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surréal, and the Kim Richmond Concert Jazz Orchestra. She has appeared on national television with Rickey Minor, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna and Kanye West, in episodes of "Chuck" and "The Voice," and in the United Airlines commercial "Onboard with 'Rhapsody in Blue'."  Emily performs on a S.W. Lewis horn and a Conn 8D, H Series.

Daren Robbins has been on the faculty of the College of Music at Mahidol University since 2008 and a member of the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra since 2009. At Mahidol he serves as chair of the Brass and Percussion Department as well as professor of horn, brass literature and pedagogy, and chamber music. He is an active member of the International Horn Society where he serves as Regional Coordinator for Thailand, Editor of Online Music Sales library, and has performed and presented at numerous regional and international IHS events. Daren is the creator of hornexcerpts.org which is the most visited horn-related website on the internet, coach of Horn Pure, the award-winning horn ensemble comprised of students from his studio, and founder and host of the Thailand Brass and Percussion Conference. His holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of North Texas, and the University of Iowa. His primary teachers include Douglas Hill, William Scharnberg, and Kristin Thelander.

Catherine Roche-Wallace is Associate Professor of Horn and Music Theory at University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She holds the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Music from Youngstown State University where she studied with William B. Slocum, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The University of Memphis, where she studied with Richard Dolph.

Dr. Roche-Wallace performs with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, and the Louisiana Brass Quintet. Commissions and premieres include Yehudi Wyner's HORNTRIO, G. Bradley Bodine's Rhapsody for Horn and Percussion, and Anthony Plög's Horn Quartet No. 1. She has performed withorchestras in Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and Michigan, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra, and has presented recitals in nine U.S. states, Canada, and Finland. Dr. Roche-Wallace is an adjudicator and clinician for Conn/Selmer Musical Instruments, Inc. and has presented programs at Northeast, Southeast, Mid-South, and International Horn Symposia.

William Scharnberg joined the faculty at the University of North Texas in 1983 and became a Regents Professor in 2002. He is principal horn of the Dallas Opera Orchestra and Wichita Falls Symphony and regularly performs chamber music in a variety of venues. He has been a member of the faculty at the University of Oklahoma, Pacific Lutheran University, the Royal Music Academy of Stockholm, and Central Missouri State University. He has performed as principal horn of the Tri-City Symphony (Iowa-Illinois), Tacoma Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Dallas Ballet, Dallas Bach Society, Royal Opera of Stockholm, Classical Music Seminar (Austria), Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and Flathead Festival Orchestra. He presented solo recitals at four International Horn Symposia and the first Hungarian Horn Workshop, and has performed concertos with several regional orchestras. His recorded performances can be heard on Klavier, Eco-Classic, Crystal, Centaur, and Chandos labels. He serves the International Horn Society as Editor of The Horn Call, past President (1990-1992), and former Music Review Editor (1981-2003). His publications include many journal articles and four editions of eighteenth and nineteenth-century works for horn. Professor Scharnberg has also been a frequent finalist in the Reader's Digest and Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes.

Engelbert Schmidwas born in South Germany on a small farm. After his  “Humanistic Abitur” he studied horn with Jack Meredith at the Munich Conservatory and privately with Michael Höltzel. With 16 and 18 he got German prize winner at “Jugend musiziert, was Solo Horn in the German Youth Orchestra for 4 years and Solo Horn in the Young German Philharmony for 2 years. With 19 he was appointed as Solo Horn with Munich Symphonics, with 21 Solo Horn with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin. At age 22 he won 2nd horn with the Berlin Philharmonics, then getting his final Orchestral Position: Solo Horn for 10 years with the Munich Radio Orchestra, 1978 - 1988. He travelled worldwide as International Soloist and chamber musician, finishing his Career because of too much work with his horns in 1993 at the 25th IHS-Symposium in Florida with Weber-Concertino. There are CDs with Calig and Orfeo labels and over 30 radio productions, including Weber Concertino and Richard Strauss 2nd horn concerto.

In 1980 he introduced his Engelbert Schmid Horns at the European Horn Symposium in Trossingen Germany, for another 10 years making the prototypes himself and continuing as Solo Horn and Soloist. In 1990 he graduated his master craftsman´s diploma and founded his own production in Tiefenried. Since 2005 the Engelbert Schmid Horns are made in a new and trend setting building in Mindelzell www.engelbert-schmid-horns.com with an affiliated Amphitheater in Old Greek style www.amphitheater-mindelzell.de. Engelbert Schmid presently is establishing his Spanish Don Angel Wines www.don-angel.net. 

Dr. Sarah Schouten is currently Instructor of High Brass at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and Instructor of Horn at Marywood University (Scranton, PA). In addition to her university duties, she is an active free-lance artist, clinician, and teacher in Pennsylvania. Her orchestral experience includes the Ocala Symphony, the Altoona Symphony, the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra, the Nittany Valley Symphony, the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to teaching and orchestral performing, Sarah is a member of Just Two, a horn/guitar duo with Thomas Cody. She has been an active lecturer and performer at numerous conferences, workshops, and festivals including the Northeast Horn Workshop, the Southeast Horn Workshop, the International Horn Symposium, the Stander Symposium, the Music at Penn’s Woods Festival, and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. She has also given recitals and masterclasses, as a soloist and chamber musician, at The Pennsylvania State University, Florida State University, Ouachita Baptist University, The University of South Alabama, and Pensacola Junior College.

Dr. Schouten earned her DM from Florida State University, her MM from The Pennsylvania State University, and BA in history, Spanish, and music, from the University of Dayton. She is also an alumnus of The Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestral Musicians.

Brent Shires teaches Horn, Music Theory and Brass Pedagogy classes at the University of Central Arkansas. He serves as Brass Chamber Music Coordinator, directing the UCA Horn Ensemble and UCA Brass Choir and coaching smaller groups. He is also adjunct horn faculty at Hendrix College, and serves on the summer faculties of Dixie Band Camp and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan.

Brent performs regularly with the faculty quintet Pinnacle Brass, and in collaborative and solo recitals. He holds positions with the Arkansas Symphony, Conway Symphony, and Pine Bluff Symphony; and is the house hornist at The Arkansas Repertory Theater. He is a founding member of the IFC3 Chamber Winds Festival based in Eugene, Oregon. His solo, chamber and orchestral career has taken him to performances throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Dr. Shires is a Conn-Selmer artist clinician, performing on the Conn 8D. 

Dr. Shires earned degrees from the State University of New York at Potsdam and Northern Illinois University; and the DMA degree in Horn Performance and Literature from the University of Illinois, studying with Kazimierz Machala. He also spent one semester studying at the Birmingham Conservatoire in England. Dr. Shires' primary research are focuses on original works for solo horn with wind band, and can be found at www.horn-and-band.info. Since 2002 Brent has been active with the International Horn Society as Regional Workshop Coordinator and Arkansas Area Rep.

Alexander Shuhan, Associate Professor of Horn, joined the Ithaca College faculty in 1998. He is principal horn of the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra and the Fort Smith (AR) Symphony Orchestra and was principal horn of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra from 2000–2010. From 2005–2010, he served as Valade Instructor of Horn at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp. He performs frequently with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and has played with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival and the Northeast Pennsylvania Philharmonic. As a founding member (1993), hornist, pianist and composer of Rhythm & Brass, he has performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Japan and the Middle East. He was a member of Dallas Brass from 1985–1993. As a member of Rhythm & Brass and Dallas Brass, he has appeared as soloist with numerous U.S. symphony orchestras, including those in Dallas, Detroit, Milwaukee, Rochester, Syracuse, Tucson, Phoenix, Jacksonville, Oregon, Denver and Grand Rapids. He studied at Southern Methodist University with Greg Hustis, the Eastman School of Music with Verne Reynolds, and the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School with Harry Berv. Other teachers include Marvin Howe, Nancy Cochran, John Jacobsen and Henry Babcock.

The Shuhan-Luk Trio, flutist Elizabeth Shuhan, hornist Alexander Shuhan, and pianist Siu Yan Luk, is committed to expanding the repertoire for this unusual pairing of instruments through active commissioning of new works and transcriptions of existing chamber repertoire. The group has performed throughout Central New York, toured in Arkansas in April 2014, will perform in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Florida during the 2015-16 academic year, and is currently preparing its first recording.

Megan Small is a student of Jeffrey Agrell at the University of Iowa where she is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Horn Performance with a secondary area in Musicology. For the 2014-2015 academic year, Megan conducted research in Budapest, Hungary as part of the Fulbright Student Research Grant. Megan’s previous academic achievements include a Master of Music degree in Horn Performance from Illinois State University, a Master of Music degree in Musicology from the University of Kansas, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Missouri State University. Her previous teachers include Joe Neisler, Paul Stevens, Lisa Casey, and Bob McDowell.

A native of Portsmouth, VA, Kristin Smith earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Technology from Radford University and a Master of Music degree in Horn Performance from the University of Florida. Her teachers include Wallace Easter, Paul Basler, and David Jolley. She has performed with the Valdosta, Gainesville, and Lynchburg Symphonies and is 2nd horn in Opera on the James. Mrs. Smith was the winner of the 2004 Southeast Horn Workshop College Solo Competition and performs on a Hans Hoyer G10 horn.

Nicholas Smith came to Wichita, Kansas in 1975 assuming the dual positions of Professor of Horn at Wichita State University and Principal Horn of the Wichita Symphony.  He has been a member of WSU’s Wichita Brass Quintet and Lieurance Woodwind Quintet, producing that ensemble’s three CD’s on the Summit Recording Label.  He has held the Principal Horn positions in the Oklahoma City Symphony, the Madison (WI) Symphony and the American Sinfonietta chamber orchestra.  Dr. Smith has worked with summer festivals such as the AIMS in Graz, Austria, the Brevard Music Center, the Bay View (MI) Music Festival and, the Bellingham, (WA) Music Festival.  He has been a frequent soloist and lecturer at regional and international conferences of the IHS and hosted three regional conferences in 1991, 1996 and 2006.  His latest publication Don’t Miss! deals with techniques to help horn players play more accurately.  Dr. Smith’s students occupy positions in many orchestras and military service bands throughout the United States, Europe and the Orient. In recognition of his teaching accomplishments, Wichita State University named Dr. Smith to its Academy of Effective Teaching in 2004.  A native Kansan, he earned degrees at Pittsburg State University (BM) and the Eastman School of Music (MM, DMA, and Performers Certificate).  Principal teachers include Verne Reynolds, Philip Farkas, and Roland Berger. 

An internationally acclaimed horn player, music educator, lecturer, and clinician, Patrick Smith actively challenges and stimulates students in both performance and academic settings. He is Associate Professor of Horn and Music History at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

A native of Gainesville, Florida, Smith holds a Performer’s Certificate, Ph.D. and BME degrees from the University of Florida at Gainesville, along with a Master of Music Degree from the Hartt School of Music. His horn instructors include Paul Basler, David Jolley, and Bruce Atwell, while David Z. Kushner and Kenneth Nott served as Smith’s mentors in music history.

Patrick is an alumnus of the Aspen and Brevard Music Festivals and has performed with numerous professional ensembles, including the Richmond, North Carolina, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Valdosta, Florida West Coast, and Ridgefield Symphony Orchestras, the American Chamber Winds, and the Carolina Wind Quintet. He has appeared as a soloist with the Emerson String Quartet, the Hartford Brass Quintet, the Gainesville Symphony, and at the Paley International Music Festival. 

He has been an active member of the International Horn Society since his days as an undergraduate student. He is a winner of numerous solo competitions and serves as the Virginia Representative for the IHS. He performs on the Hans Hoyer G10 horn and is a Buffet Group USA/Hans Hoyer Performing Artist. Smith has served on the faculties of the Eastern Music Festival, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and resides in Richmond with his wife Kristin and daughter Addison.

A native of Portsmouth, VA, Kristin Smith earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Technology from Radford University and a Master of Music degree in Horn Performance from the University of Florida. Her teachers include Wallace Easter, Paul Basler, and David Jolley. She has performed with the Valdosta, Gainesville, and Lynchburg Symphonies and is 2nd horn in Opera on the James. Mrs. Smith was the winner of the 2004 Southeast Horn Workshop College Solo Competition and performs on a Hans Hoyer G10 horn.

Jeffrey Snedeker has been on the music faculty at Central Washington University since 1991. His teaching duties have included horn, music history, and directing the Brass Choir and Horn Ensemble. He has received several awards for teaching, research, and service, most recently the 2012 Higher Education Music Educator of the Year by the Washington Music Educators Association, the 2014 Phi Kappa Phi National Artist Award, and the 2014 Washington State Timm Ormsby Faculty Citizenship Award. He was selected Distinguished University Professor for Service at CWU in 2012. Jeff has been a featured artist, clinician, lecturer, and host of regional, national, and international conferences for the International Horn Society, Historic Brass Society, Northwest Horn Society, Washington Music Educators Association, among others, all over the US, and in Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, and England. He is recognized as a leading performer and scholar of the horn solo repertoire, chamber music, jazz, and historical performance, and has published over 50 articles on a variety of musical topics, including entries in The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, journals of the International Horn Society, Historic Brass Society, and seven articles in the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He has released four solo recordings featuring the natural horn and the horn in jazz settings. Jeff has been Principal Horn of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra since 1992. He lives in Ellensburg, Washington, with his extremely patient wife and two talented sons.

Kurt Snyder has enjoyed a varied and extensive career in music performance and pedagogy. As a student at UCLA, SMU and the Juilliard School his teachers included the preeminent horn players, Vincent DeRosa and Sinclair Lott in Los Angeles, James London in Dallas and James Chambers in New York. Mr. Snyder has been passing that knowledge on, formerly as professor of horn at the University of Nevada and the California Institute of the Arts, and currently as the horn instructor for Idyllwild Arts. His students have gone on to such distinguished schools as Curtis, Eastman, USC, Oberlin, Manhattan, Yale, Indiana, New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School.

Mr. Snyder has performed on more than five hundred motion picture scores with a stellar list of film composers including Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Elmer Bernstein, Randy Newman, Alan Sylvestri, Michael Giacchino, Danny Elfman and James Horner. He has also served as principal horn in concert for such artists as Tony Bennet, Henry Mancini, Luciano Pavoratti and The Three Tenors as well as with numerous Broadway shows. His classical experience includes work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, CalArts New Twentieth Century Players, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra among many others. Mr. Snyder has toured and recorded extensively as a chamber musician with the New World Brass Quintet, the Sierra Wind Quintet and the IdyllwildTrio.

Appointed in 2010 by Victor Hugo Toro, Lucca Soares is the principal horn of the Campinas Symphony Orchestra-São Paulo. Prior to joining the CSO, he served as principal horn of the Repertoir Orchestra of São Paulo and Jazz Orchestra of São Paulo from 2004 to 2010, and he has appeared with a wide variety of orchestras throughout his career, including the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, São Paulo Metropolitan Orchestra, Minas Gerais Philarmonic, Baden-Baden Philarmonic and Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe.

He has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras of the São Paulo area and serves on the horn faculty as assistant teacher at Campinas University of São Paulo. Soares can be heard on numerous films and soundtracks and has also recorded a CD with his father, the hornist Adalto Soares, with Brazilian popular music called “Horn Brasil”.

Soares received his Bachelor’s degree from the Santa Marcelina University, and his Master’s degree from the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. His past professors include Will Sanders, Adalto Soares. Soares has also participated in many international music competitions and is very active in chamber music. He is a member of The World Orchestra since 2005 and has played on tour in Europe, United States of America and Canada.

Soares is currently getting his Doctor’s degree at Campinas University of São Paulo and is the assistant director and co-fouder of the internationally renowned social music project “Orquestra de Metais Lyra Tatuí”.

Michelle Stebleton has performed worldwide as a soloist, chamber musician and clinician. Stebleton performs regularly with MirrorImage and several other international ensembles, with recent performances including concerto and chamber performances in Asunción, Paraguay and Prague. She is a charter member of the bi-annual Orchestra Festival of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Stebleton has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and lecturer at 15 International Horn Society conferences, including as a Guest Artist and Co-Host in 1993 and Guest Artist in 2006 in South Africa. She served two terms on the IHS Advisory Council, and also as a clinician at four International Interpreter's Horncourses in Prague, at the 2013 Western US Horn Symposium and at the 1994 First International Swiss Horn Workshop. Early in her career, she shared second prize in both the Professional and Natural Horn divisions of the American Horn Competition, having already won two student divisions. Stebleton received two performance degrees from the University of Michigan where she studied with Louis J. Stout and Lowell Greer. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, Stebleton currently teaches horn at Florida State University

Stephanie Stetson grew up in the Seattle area and while there studied with Anna Cloud and Christopher Leuba. She moved to Los Angeles and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Horn Performance from the University of Southern California. While there she had the privilege of studying with Jim Decker and Vincent DeRosa. She has been a free-lance musician in Los Angeles ever since. Stephanie regularly performs with the Pacific Symphony, LA Opera Orchestra, Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony and the Long Beach Municipal Band. She has performed in numerous Broadway shows at the Schubert, Ahmanson and Pantages Theatres such as: Wicked, Lion King, The Producers, Phantom of the Opera etc… She also has extensive studio recording experience in TV, radio, audio recordings and motion picture soundtracks. 

Stephanie has been teaching at Azusa Pacific University since 2004 where she has taught Applied Horn, Horn Master Class, Horn Literature and Horn Pedagogy. She is a member of the APU Faculty WW Quintet. Since the beginning of 2010 she has also been teaching applied horn at Citrus College.

Stephanie is married with 4 children. She loves her family very much and enjoys the blessings of a good family and good music every day of her life.

Whilst growing up on the family farm in rural New South Wales, Dr. Robert Stonestreet began studying the horn with Campbell Barnes, and then undertook a Bachelor of Music degree and Honours year at The University of Newcastle with Geoff O’Reilly of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. During these studies Robert performed with the SBS Youth Orchestra, Sydney Sinfonia, Hunter Sinfonia, several regional orchestras and chamber groups, as well as being involved with Australian Youth Orchestra programs. This was followed by a Masters of Music at Baylor University with Jeffrey Powers where he was the graduate assistant in the horn studio and was also inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda. Upon returning to Australia he completed PhD studies at The University of Tasmania, researching the development of low horn technique and repertoire with Andrew Bain, Wendy Page and Greg Stephens. This research has resulted in lectures at the International Horn Symposium (Memphis, TN in 2013 and Los Angeles, CA in 2015) and the Historic Brass Society’s Early Brass Festival (Northfield, MN in 2013) as well as publication in The Horn Call (vol. 45/2 February 2015). Whilst based in Hobart, Robert also played with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Hobart Chamber Orchestra, Tasmanian Discovery Orchestra, TDO Sinfonietta and various other ensembles. He continues to perform regularly in solo, chamber and orchestral settings as a freelance musician in Australia whilst also following up on several other research projects.

A native of Taiwan, Yu-Ting (Tina) Su is Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Northern Iowa. From 2000-2006, she was the third horn with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra. She has performed extensively in the United States, Europe, Asia and Russia. 

Su made her debut as a soloist with the HSNU High School Chamber Orchestra in Taiwan at the age of 15. Besides orchestral performances and solo recitals, Su has been an active chamber musician. She was a member of the Northwind Quintet and is a co-founder of the Wonder Horns, a horn quartet based in Taiwan. She has performed with the Miró String Quartet and Boston Brass, and at the Taiwan Connection Music Festival and the Cedar Valley Chamber Music Festival. 

Su received her Bachelor of Music degree and a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, her Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, and her Doctoral of Musical Arts degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her principal teachers include Si-Yuan Zuang, Verne Reynolds, Peter Kurau, and William Purvis, and she has studied chamber music with the New York Woodwind Quintet and the American Brass Quintet.  

Passionate about expanding the horn repertoire, Su has premiered pieces written for horn and other instruments by Reynolds, Tsai, Lu, Schwabe, and Askim. She also arranged several volumes of art songs for horn and piano; Three Bizet Songs for Horn and Piano was published through Veritas Musica in the 2011. Her solo album Watercolors:Art Songs for Hornand Piano was released in 2014.

Gergely Sugar is member of the prestigious Vienna Symphony Orchestra and professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Institute Oberschützen. Gergely Sugar enjoys an active and successful carrier not only as performer, teacher and lecturer -at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, at Konservatorium City of Vienna University but also as manager -former director of diverse companies and organisations such as the label “Wiener Symphoniker”, former president of the Vienna Symphonic Society and current board member of the Austrian Interpreter Society (OESTIG).

Radegundis Tavares obtained his BA in music from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) under the guidance of Professor Cisneiro de Andrade. He began studying the french horn at age 11 at the UFPB Music Extension Courses. Later, at age 12, he performed for the first time as soloist with the UFPB Youth Orchestra.

At the age of 15, Radegundis was granted the honorable mention award at the Sixth Weril Award, and debuted as a soloist at the Teatro Municipal de São Paulo, playing his own transcription of the Variations on "The Carnival of Venice" by Jean-Baptiste Arban.

At the age of 17, he performed as guest first french horn with the Paraiba Symphony Orchestra, a position he held until he was 19 years old, when he passed a public contest for the post of full-time professor of french horn at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN).

Radegundis recorded two CDs, the first entitled "UNIVERSAL" and the second “Radegundis Tavares”. Since then he has worked as teacher, soloist and chamber musician in various major musical venues in Brazil.

Melisandra Teteris graduated with a B.M. and M.M. in horn performance from California State University at Long Beach and is currently completing an M.A. in musicology with an emphasis in Latvian film music during the Soviet era. Since coming in contact with unpublished music for horn by Latvian composers, Melisandra has become an advocate for the music by researching, collecting, and performing these pieces. In 2013, she performed a solo recital featuring the U.S. premier of several of these works for the Latvian Music Society in Cleveland, Ohio. Aside from her involvement in the Latviancommunity, Melisandra is an active freelancer in Southern California and has toured in Latvia, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan. Melisandra is also active as an educator, teaching Orff courses, band classes, instructing horn at several schools, exhibiting iVasi, and also has a successful private studio. As an advocate for Latvian music, Melisandra will continue to research topics in the various genres and is working towards having her research published to further educate fellow musicians and historians on these topics. She will also be working on gathering oral histories in order to help support the culture which is few in numbers.

Kristin Thelander serves as director of planning for the School of Music, and in this capacity she is engaged in all planning for a new music building expected to open around 2016.  She previously served as the director of the School of Music (2000-2009) and as horn professor (1989-2000).  As a hornist, she has had a rich and active performing career on both natural horn and modern horn, appearing as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, and the People's Republic of China.  She has been a featured artist at many regional and international horn workshops and international brass symposia, and she has performed with summer orchestra and chamber music festivals in Colorado, Oregon, and New York. She has recorded solo and chamber music for Crystal Records, CRI, Vienna Modern Masters, Centaur, Capstone, University of Wisconsin, and The University of Iowa. She has served as Advisory Council member, Secretary-Treasurer, and Vice-President of the International Horn Society. She is a member of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra and performs locally with the Bon Vivant Horn Quartet.

Thelander has served two terms as a member of the National Association of Schools of Music Commission on Accreditation. She is also active as an NASM visiting evaluator for institutional reviews and as an external consultant for university departmental reviews.

Thelander holds a B.M. in horn performance from St. Olaf College, an M.A. in musicology from the University of Minnesota, and a D.M.A. in horn performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Candace Thomas has recently completed her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the tutelage of Bernhard Scully. She also holds a Master of Music in HornPerformance from University of Massachusetts¬-Amherst with Laura Klock, and a Bachelor of Music in Horn Performance from Boston University with Eric Ruske.

As a freelance musician she has performed with numerous ensembles from local community orchestras to jazz bands to chamber music. She is also committed to supporting new music for horn. In 2011 she was a recipient of the IHS Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Fund. 
Currently, Candace can be found performing with groups throughout the Southeast. She is a member of the Beltline Brass Quintet, and has performed with the Hunstville and Augusta Symphony Orchestras, Chamber Cartel, and various ensembles throughout Georgia. Most recently she premiered a new work for horn and vibraphone, Tearmunn by Adam Scott Neal, at the 2014 National Association of Composers convention at Georgia State University. When not performing she is working with band directors and their students at symphonic band camps, and also maintains a private horn studio in the Atlanta area.

Dr. Timothy Thompson is Professor of Music at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he has served on the faculty since 1979. He has served on the faculties of the University of North Carolina and Wisconsin as well as numerous festivals and camps. Thompson has served as guest artist and clinician with universities and high schools throughout the United States and internationally. He has been guest soloist with the National Orchestras of Bolivia and Thailand, the North Carolina Symphony, the Music Festival of Arkansas, Pinnacle Players (Little Rock, AR), the North Arkansas Symphony, the Fort Smith (AR) Symphony, and the Southeast Kansas Symphony as well as bands of the University of Arkansas and Kasetsart Univeristy in Bangkok, Thailand. He has been featured as soloist and teacher, and with chamber and orchestral ensembles in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Thailand, and throughout Europe and the United States. During summers he serves on the faculty of Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (MI). Thompson has served guest residencies at dozens of schools and universities including the Queensland Conservatorium of Music (Brisbane, Australia), the National University of Bolivia (La Paz), the Instituto de Bellas Artes (Santa Cruz, Bolivia), and several universities in Thailand. Dr. Thompson earned the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts, as well as Master of Music, from the University of Wisconsin. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina. Principal teachers were Douglas Hill, Boris Rybka  and Wayne Amick. Additional studies have included work with Dale Clevenger, Roland Pandolfi, Ifor James and Froydis Wekre.

Kerry Turner has become one of the most recognized names, not only in the horn world, but in brass playing in general. Whether as a composer or a performing artist on the horn, he appears regularly on the great concert stages of the world. Mr. Turner's major ensembles with whom he performs include the world-famous American Horn Quartet, the stunning Virtuoso Horn Duo, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. As a member of these prestigious organizations, he has concertized on four continents. He is also a frequently invited soloist and clinician, having performed and taught in Germany, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Japan, the United States and the Czech Republic.

The United States Army Field Band Horn Section performs for thousands annually as members of the Concert Band of the Musical Ambassadors of the Army. One of the four premiere bands of the United States Army, the horn section includes Master Sergeants Alan White and Robert Cherry, along with Staff Sergeants Rebecca McLaughlin, J.G. Miller, Selena Adams, and Rebecca Bainbridge. The collective experiences of its six members include performing in orchestral, rock, jazz, studio, and chamber music genres. Additionally, the members present clinics and master-classes throughout the United States and abroad, bringing their unique backgrounds and musical excellence to the next generation of musicians.

Photo: L to R (back) MSG Robert Cherry, SSG J.G. Miller, SSG Selena Adams
L to R (front) SSG Rebecca Bainbridge, MSG Alan White, SSG Becky McLaughlin

Pablo Urbina (b. 1988) is a native of Pamplona, Spain, where he began studying music at the age of 8. He received a Bachelor degree from the Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, as International and Music Scholar studying with Kristy Morrell and Jim Thatcher. He graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Vince de Rosa Outstanding Hornist Award and Order of Troy Medal. In London he received a Master of Music in French horn with conducting as a scholar at the Royal College of Music, studying with Peter Stark, Tim Jones, John Ryan, Jeff Bryant, Sue Dent  and Simon Rayner. He has worked with musicians such as Bernard Haitink, John Wilson, Vladimir Jurowski, Michael Tilson Thomas, Midori Goto, Juan Diego Florez, Cecilia Bartoli, Randy Newman, Pablo Mielgo and John Williams to name a few, and has conducted orchestras including the Savaria Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra (Spain), Farnborough Symphony Orchestra, London Lawyer´s Symphony Orchestra, Royal College of Music Film Orchestra (which he co-founded), and the London City Orchestra, for which he is currently the Music Director. Pablo keeps an active diary as conductor as well as performer, having collaborated with orchestras such as Symphony Orchestra of Navarra (Spain), the Harmonia Orchestra (in concert with members of the Vienna Philharmonic) and Baluarte Opera (Spain), and is a member of the Cataleya Quintet, a 2013-2014 Park Lane Artist Group. He is also a researcher, and currently works as Project Manager and archivist for the music library of renowned film composer Michael Kamen.  www.pablourbinainmusic.com  

Rose Valby enjoys a diverse performing and teaching career in central Texas where she is pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin and maintains a private horn studio. Miss Valby is third horn in the Round Rock Symphony and has performed with the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio, and Austin, Brazos Valley, and Fort Smith symphonies, among others. She is a member of the woodwind quintet QuinTexas, who received the Coleman-Saunderson Prize at the 69th Annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition. She received degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was an inaugural member of the Graduate Brass Quintet Scholarship program and a recipient of the John Barrows Scholarship, and Ithaca College, where she was a winner of the Ithaca College Annual Concerto Competition. 

Associate professor of horn, Lydia Van Dreel joined the University of Oregon faculty in 2006. Ms. Van Dreel maintains an active and diverse performing career as orchestral, chamber, solo and recording artist. A member of performing groups QUADRE: The Voice of Four Horns, The Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, The Eugene Symphony Orchestra, The IRIS Orchestra, and the UO's Faculty Brass and Wind Quintets, Ms. Van Dreel can be heard in concert halls all over the world, and on many recordings with groups as diverse as QUADRE, The IRIS Orchestra, Federale, The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and Kitty Brazelton’s DaDaDah. Ms. Van Dreel just released her first solo CD project, "New Millennium Music for Horn". Before joining the Oregon faculty, Van Dreel held a ten-year tenure as co-principal horn of the Sarasota Orchestra. 

Dr. Jeb Wallace serves as Horn Professor and Brass Area Coordinator at Utah Valley University. He maintains a diverse career as performer and educator, having  performed with numerous professional orchestras such as the American Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, Louisiana Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, Utah Lyric Opera, Utah Chamber Orchestra, and Dallas Wind Symphony, among others. Dr. Wallace is an active chamber musician and as a member of the Alpine Chamber Winds, Utah Brass Quintet, and the Inverness Trio. He has appeared as a soloist at the Park City International Chamber Music Festival, Salty Cricket Composer’s Collective, with the Stony Brook Symphony, UVU Chamber Orchestra, and at several regional and international IHS workshops and symposia. An advocate for contemporary music, he has collaborated with groups such as Alarm Will Sound, TACTUS, New Music New Haven, BYU Group for New Music, and the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players. He has presented recitals and masterclasses institutions such as Ithaca College, Arizona State University, University of South Carolina, the Swedish National Orchestral Academy, Interlochen Arts Academy, University of Dayton, and others. Previously, he served on the faculty at Susquehanna University, Dickinson College, and James Madison University. He received his education at Stony Brook University (DMA), the Yale School of Music (AD), the Cleveland Institute of Music (MM), and Southern Methodist University (BM). His primary teachers were William Purvis, Eli Epstein, and Gregory Hustis. He has recorded for Naxos, Beauport Classics, Beggars Banquet, Gasparo, and for numerous motions pictures and television soundtracks.

Ms. Chi-Zong Wang won First Prize in the National Taiwan Music Competition three years in the row during her junior high school year. After passing the national exam with the highest marks, Ms. Wang was awarded full-tuition scholarship to further continue her study in the United States at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts.  

Ms. Wang earned her Bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute and also received her Master’s degree and the Artist Diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music. She was accepted and studied in the Doctoral program at the University of New York State in Stony Brook. Her principal teachers include Kurt Snyder, Myron Bloom, Eli Epstein, and William Purvis.

Ms. Wang has given numerous solo, concerto recitals and participated in many CD recordings with world-renowned orchestras. In 1986 and 1989, Ms. Wang was invited by the International French Horn Association to perform Mozart Concert No.3 with Brigham Young University Orchestra and Hindemith Horn Sonata at the 19th and 21st annul International Horn Society in Utah, U.S.A and Munich, Germany. During her residency in the U.S., she was active and participated in the Haddonfield Symphony, the Erie Philharmonic and the Allentown Symphony. 

After returning to her native country, she held full-time position at the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra for 5 years. In January 2004, she was invited by Classic- Chevalier Music Society, R. O. C. to participate in their 2nd annual Gala concert series and performed Richard Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1. In September of 2005 and October of 2006, Ms. Wang presented performances of Weber’s Horn Concertino and Mozart Horn Concerto No. 4 with the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra. In December of 2006, she was invited by violinist Hu, Nai-Yuan to join Taiwan Connection Music Festival to promote chamber music and give regular concerts. In July 2008, Ms. Wang collaborated with conductor Yeh, Shu-Han and appeared as a soloist performing Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1 with Kidlion Wind Ensemble. In March 2010, Ms. Wang and National Taiwan Symphony performed Hindemith Horn Concerto witch was Taiwan premiere. 

Ms. Wang joined National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra since 2007 as the Principal Horn. In addition, she holds teaching positions in various schools, including National Kaohsiung Normal University, National Sun Yat-sen University, Tunghai University.

Robert Lee Watt retired as Assistant Principal French horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2008. He studied at The New England Conservatory with Harry Shapiro of the Boston Symphony. Mr. Shapiro recognized a talent in Mr. Watt and drove him hard as a student. Placing him in music camps to further his studies during the summers and gradually working the young hornist into professional freelance work in Boston. While still a student at the New England Conservatory, Mr. Watt was chosen to perform the Strauss Horn Concerto No.1 with the Boston Pops under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. He was then asked to perform the same concerto with the New Jersey Symphony under the direction of Maestro, Henry Lewis. As he progressed further he began to play as a substitute hornist with the Boston symphony orchestra, under Erich Leinsdorf. He attended the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood in 1969 before being hired as Assistant Principal French horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under music director Zubin Mehta.
After taking his post in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mr. Watt continued to perform as a soloist, performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta in the Los Angeles area.
In the late eighties Mr. Watt helped organize an African American Brass Quintet that performed throughout the United States and Europe. In 1989 he was invited to serve on the Grant Panel of the National Endowment of the Arts (Chamber Music Division) in Washington D.C.
He developed a chamber music series at the prestigious “City Club on Bunker Hill” hiring musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other freelance players to perform on his “Renaissance Evenings,” which featured chamber music and fine dining in the same evening.
Mr. Watt is licensed airplane pilot with an instrument rating. He is a saber fencer and a staff writer for the Brass Trade magazine, Brass Bulletin, published in Switzerland. He published several articles on Jazz and Classical musicians. He speaks German and Italian.

Master Sergeant Alan White earned a Master of Music degree from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining The U.S. Army Field Band, he performed as Associate Principal Horn of La Orquesta Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico (Toluca), and Second Horn with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, and the Cape Town (South Africa) Philharmonic. MSG White has served as group leader of the Pentagon Winds, currently serves as the French Horn Section Leader with the Concert Band, and is a member of the Woodwind Ambassadors. He has performed with the Army Field Band Horn Quartet at two International Horn Society Symposiums, and with the Pentagon Winds at an International Double Reed Society Symposium. MSG White's primary horn teachers include Leigh Martinet, Robert Pierce, Peter Landgren, and Michael Hatfield.

Adam Wolf, founder of the band Rock Horn Project, is an active freelance musician in Los Angeles. He has played with various orchestras, opera companies and artists all over Southern California, including the Long Beach Symphony, San Diego Opera, Debut Orchestra, and artists such as The Airborne Toxic Event, Ok Go, Will I Am, and Mike Keneally. Along with horn playing, Adam is an accomplished classical composer. From wind band to sonata, Adam has written many pieces, most notably "Skyward" for wind band premiered in Carnegie Hall in 2009 and "The Devil Inside" for trombone and brass ensemble, premiered by James Miller in 2013. As a teacher, Adam has taught at numerous middle and high schools around Southern California, including his current positions at West Ranch, Hart, Golden Valley, and Arcadia High School, along with being on brass staff for Pacific Crest Drum and Bugle Corps. Adam is a graduate of California Institute of the Arts, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts as a Performer/Composer. www.rockhornproject.com

A native of London, Ontario, Canada, Joshua Wood began his musical studies on the piano. A regular participant in various choirs, bands, and music festivals, he began private study on the horn at age 16. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Western University, a Master's degree in Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Horn from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His primary teachers include Randy Gardner, W. Peter Kurau, Derek Conrod, and Sasha Gorbasew.  
He has performed with a number of professional ensembles in Canada and the United States, including Orchestra London, Canada, the Richmond (Indiana) Symphony Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Additionally, he has performed extensively with professional musical theater companies throughout Ontario. In 2013, he participated in the Canada-India Youth Orchestra cultural exchange program, giving several orchestral and chamber performances in Bangalore, India. In 2014, Joshua presented lectures at the Southeast, Mid-South, and Northeast regional workshops of the International HornSociety, and performed at the Mid-South workshop as part of a faculty horn ensemble. He has been a guest lecturer at Western University, and has given masterclasses and private lessons at several high schools in the Cincinnati area, both individually and as a member of the quintet Brass Without Borders. He is committed to revitalizing art music in North America through community outreach and performance.

Kristin Woodward is an active freelancer and educator in Tallahassee, Florida.  She currently plays third horn with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra and the Sinfonia Gulf Coast and is the principal horn player in the Wind Orchestra and the University Symphony Orchestra at Florida State University.  As an educator, she taught general music and band in the public schools in Minneapolis, MN and she currently maintains a studio of beginner, intermediate, and adult horn players. She also works for the Tallahassee Youth Symphony as the Brass Coach and teaches horn at the Florida State University Summer Band Camps.  In her free time, she enjoys reading, spending time at the beach with her husband, cooking and eating, and all things science fiction and fantasy.