Category: Brass

An active performer and teacher, Katherine Marie Smith is Assistant Lecturer of Horn at the University of Wyoming, Fourth Horn of the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, Principal Horn of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, Second Horn of the Fort Collins Symphony, has served as guest Principal Horn of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra and Pro Musica Colorado, and is on the sublists of numerous orchestras around the country including the Colorado and Charlotte Symphony Orchestras and the Colorado Music Festival. While pursuing her undergraduate degree with David Jolley at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, she had the privilege of performing with a wide variety of professional ensembles in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Avery Fischer Hall. In 2005, while attending the North Carolina School of the Arts high school, Katherine was the winner of the Southeast Horn Workshop High School Solo Competition, and in 2009, she won the Columbia University Bach Society Concerto Competition. Katherine received her Master of Music degree from Northwestern University where she studied with Gail Williams and William Barnewitz. After receiving her MM, Katherine was invited to play with the North Carolina Symphony as Assistant Principal/Utility Horn during their 2011-2012 season. Last season, Katherine had the opportunity to fill in last-minute as soloist with the Wyoming Symphony, and in May she performed in a hand-picked Brass and Percussion Ensemble of Northwestern University Alumni to commemorate the opening of their new music school. During the summer of 2016, she had the unique opportunity to tour the country and perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with the indie folk singer-songwriter, Gregory Alan Isakov, and has since recorded and performed with several other indie folk artists, including Elephant Revival and Natalie Tate.

A self-proclaimed teaching addict, in addition to teaching at UW, Katherine spent the 2013 spring semester as interim instructor of horn and is a former Doctor of Musical Arts in Horn Performance and Pedagogy candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder where she studied with Michael Thornton. She has served on the faculty of several music camps and workshops, including two years with the CU Summer Music Academy.

Katherine has had the privilege of performing with dozens of different chamber ensembles including the award-winning wind quintet, 40th Parallel. Katherine is currently a member of the Snowy Range Brass and the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Brass and Woodwind Quintets and performs regularly with chamber music groups throughout the area. She is incredibly thrilled to have the opportunity to perform in such a variety of ensembles while also actively exercising her teaching skills in beautiful Wyoming and Colorado.

Grammy winning hornist, Marian Hesse, is Professor of Music at the University of Northern Colorado. A member of the renowned Chestnut Brass Company (CBC), Ms. Hesse, a graduate of Yale University, is a multi-instrumentalist who performs on the modern horn as well as historic brasses including natural horn, sacbut, saxhorn and quinticlave. With the Chestnut Brass, she has been a finalist in the esteemed Naumburg Chamber Music Competition and a semi-finalist in the Erwin Bodky Early Music Competition. Having toured in all 50 of the United States, she has additionally performed in the Cayman Islands, Korea, Brazil, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Mexico, Canada, Iceland, Germany and Hungary.

She is a member of the Colorado Pro Musica, Colorado Ballet Orchestra and Opera Colorado and has often frequent performed with the Colorado Symphony Her more than fifteen recordings include the Grammy award winning CBC recording Hornsmoke, and recordings with the Mozart Orchestra, the Philadelphia Virtuosi, and the soundtrack of the Ken Burns Civil War television program and NFL Films. Ms. Hesse is the author of Daily Routines for the Horn Player and Daily Routines for the Student Horn Player, (Mountain Peak Music) which are highly regarded publications for horn. She has given masterclasses at Interlochen, Juilliard, Ohio State, and the University of Oregon, among others.