Brianna

As both performer and teacher, Brianna’s goal is to share her passion for making music on the horn with others. 

She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Horn Performance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, where she is serving as the horn fellow of the Plaza Winds graduate woodwind quintet. She is a graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music, where she earned her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Horn Performance, respectively. She has been lucky enough to study valved horn with Martin Hackleman, Jeff Nelsen, Dale Clevenger, and Jesse McCormick, as well as natural horn with Richard Seraphinoff. 

In addition to being a current member of the wind symphony and orchestra at UMKC, Brianna is the principal hornist of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra. In the past, she has been a member of the symphony orchestras at Indiana University and Baldwin Wallace, where she has performed orchestral and operatic repertoire ranging from Beethoven’s First Symphony to Holst’s Planets Suite to Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. She has experience performing with the wind ensembles at BW and Ithaca College, as well as numerous different chamber groups, including brass trio, quintet, and sextet, wind quintet, horn quartet, and trios for oboe, horn, and piano, and horn, tuba, and piano. Her woodwind quintet at BW, The Windtuplets, performed in a masterclass for the Imani Winds in 2017.

Brianna has performed in masterclasses for Elizabeth Freimuth, Denise Tryon, Nilo Caracristi, Carsten Duffin, David Cooper, William Caballero, Jennifer Montone, and Gail Williams. She also performed in William VerMeulen’s masterclass at the International Horn Society Symposium in 2016 at Ithaca College.

Brianna’s other accomplishments include placing third in the brass division of the Tuesday Musical Scholarship Competition, based in Akron Ohio, in 2018, and being selected a winner of the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition in 2014. She also spent the summer of 2017 at the Eastern Music Festival, in Greensboro, NC, where she performed Brahms’ Second Symphony, The Rite of Spring, and Pines of Rome among others. 

For the last seven years, Brianna has maintained a small studio of her own with students ranging from beginner to high school level, and is excited to expand her studio and reach even more students.

In her free time, Brianna enjoys hiking, biking, exploring new places with friends and family, and cuddling with her cat, Ruby.