Guest horn player joins Wind Ensemble in concert March 3

What: Master class and concert with guest artist Gail Williams
When: Master Class is Monday, March 2, 4 to 6 p.m.
Wind Ensemble concert is Tuesday, March 3, 8 p.m.
Where: King Concert Hall
Notes: Free and open to the community
Attachments: Photo of Gail Williams

FREDONIA, N.Y.— SUNY Fredonia’s School of Music will host guest artist Gail Williams, an internationally recognized horn player from Western New York. Students will have the opportunity to work with Williams in a horn master class on March 2 at 4 p.m., and the artist will be the featured soloist in the university’s Wind Ensemble Concert on Tuesday, March 3 at 8 p.m.

Both events are held in King Concert Hall on the SUNY Fredonia campus and free and open to students, faculty, staff, and the general public.

The Wind Ensemble concert, directed by Dr. Paula Holcomb will feature Williams in Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major. The concert will also include works by Grainger, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Colgrass.

Williams is currently the horn professor at Northwestern University where she has been on the faculty since 1989. She studied with John Covert at Ithaca College and received a master’s degree from Northwestern University. Her awards from Ithaca College include the Ithaca College’s Young Distinguished Alumni Award and an honorary doctorate of music.

Now an internationally recognized horn player and brass pedagogue, Williams has presented concerts, master classes, recitals and lectures throughout North America, as well as in Europe and Asia. Williams joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in December 1978, and was appointed Associate Principal Horn in 1984, a position she held until her retirement from the orchestra in 1998. She has been a member of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra, and is currently principal horn of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

As featured horn soloist, Williams has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony, Sinfonia da Camera, New World Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, Syracuse Symphony, Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, Green Bay Symphony Orchestra and a number of regional orchestras. Williams has also performed in 2004 as Principal Horn with the Saito Kenin Orchestra with Maestro Ozawa in Matsumoto, Japan. In 2005, she performed as Principal horn with the World Orchestra for Peace with Maestro Gergiev at concerts in London, Berlin, Moscow and Beijing.

Williams is a founding member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians; a critically acclaimed chamber music ensemble. She is also an original member of the Summit Brass, an ensemble with whom she has made eight recordings.

Williams has given master classes and recitals around the world, working with musicians at Juilliard, New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, the New World Symphony, Eastman School of Music, Boston Conservatory, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Illinois, Sam Houston University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the NAC Orchestra (Ottawa).