Sarah Willis | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | 23 February 1968 Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, TV presenter |
| Instrument(s) | French horn |
| Website | sarah-willis.com |
Sarah Elizabeth Peel Willis MBE (born 23 February 1968) [1] is an American-born British-American [2] French horn player. She is a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, and is a presenter of TV and online programs about classical music.
Sarah Willis was born in Bethesda, Maryland, United States, and grew up in Tokyo, Boston, Moscow, and London. [3] [4] She started playing the French horn at age 14, and attended the Royal College of Music Junior Department. She later joined the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied with Anthony Halstead and Jeff Bryant. Moving to Berlin, she studied with Fergus McWilliam.
Willis is the sister of Alastair Willis, a Grammy-nominated conductor and music director of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. [5]
In 1991, Sarah Willis took the position as second horn with the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim. She joined the Berlin Philharmonic in 2001, under Simon Rattle, becoming the first female brass player. [6] She has performed with a number of orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. She also regularly performs with chamber music ensembles.
Willis is a presenter on the German TV station Deutsche Welle, where she hosts a program entitled "Sarah’s Music". [7] She also interviews soloists and conductors for the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall, and was a mentor and presenter for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011, in Sydney. [8] She works with Zukunft@BPhil, the Berlin Philharmonic's education programme, where she creates and presents family concerts. [9] [10] [11]
Willis is the host of the regular online series Horn Hangouts, [12] which are streamed live on her website and archived on her YouTube channel. The series includes interviews with famous musicians, as well as tips on playing the instrument. She credits the series with helping to create an online community of horn players around the world. [13] Willis has recorded a number of CDs as member of the Berlin Philharmonic, as soloist, and as part of chamber ensembles. [14]
Willis worked and co-created an album called "Mozart y Mambo" with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra, which is "a chamber orchestra made up of young and talented Cuban musicians and their Cuban conductor José Antonio Méndez Padrón (Pepe), and also well-known musicians from the Cuban popular music scene." It features famous French Horn solos written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart but with a Cuban twist. [15]
Willis was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to charity and the promotion of classical music. [16]
The French horn is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B♭ is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands, although the descant and triple horn have become increasingly popular. A musician who plays a horn is known as a horn player or hornist.
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments:
The Berlin Philharmonic is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world.
Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Sicilian Symphony Orchestra and several other European orchestras. Later in life, he taught at Mainz University in Germany and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist. Born and raised in Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg, Mutter started playing the violin at age five and continued studies in Germany and Switzerland. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan and made her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1977. Since Mutter gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, she has recorded over 50 albums and performed as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide and as a recitalist. Her primary instrument is the Lord Dunn–Raven Stradivarius violin.
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Jeff Nelsen is a Canadian French horn player. He is solo horn in the Canadian Brass and is Professor of Horn at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. He has performed in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and National symphonies.
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Antônio Meneses Neto is a Brazilian cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra, was born into a family of musicians. His father was first horn player at the Opera of Rio de Janeiro. He began to study the cello when he was ten. During a tour in South America, the famous cellist Antonio Janigro met him and asked him to join his classes in Düsseldorf and then in Stuttgart. In 1977, he won the first prize at the International Competition in Munich and in 1982 he was awarded first prize and gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning the piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. By the age of 21, she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist and signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. She has since established herself as one of the leading artists of her generation. Wang currently lives in New York.
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Ellen Stone was an American French horn player. She performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony, starting in 1937, and may have been the first female member of the brass section of a major orchestra.
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