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Breanna Ellison, lauded for performances "flawless in execution and vivid in characterization" (Boston Musical Intelligencer), is a dynamic and highly sought-after horn player. Breanna has played with numerous groups throughout the US, including Boston's Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry, the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, the Ad Astra Festival Orchestral, Michael Tilson Thomas's New World Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. In February 2018, she joined the State Opera Orchestra in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria as principal horn.
Equally at home in symphonic, opera, and chamber music worlds alike, Breanna has performed in music festivals across Europe and the United States. In 2011, she served as principal horn at the Eutiner Opernfestspiele in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. She attended the Colorado College Music Festival in summer 2012, and later that summer attended the Ameropa Chamber Music Festival in Prague, Czech Republic. While in Prague, Breanna performed with an international chamber group that took second place in Ameropa's International Concertante Competition. The quartet performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante K295b in the Czech Philharmonic's Rudolfinum, Dvořák Hall with Camerata Filarmonica Bohemia. In the summer of 2015, by invitation, Breanna studied with world-renowned hornist and pedagogue Frøydis Ree Wekre in Oslo, Norway.
Holding performance degrees in both horn and piano from the University of Kansas, Breanna attended the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Cortona, Italy as a pianist in 2010. There, she met kindred spirits amongst the composers attending and later that year, invited them to Kansas to hear their commissions performed by her brass quintet, the Lawrence 5. The concert served as both premieres of their works and as a benefit concert to aid in the building of schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan through the Central Asia Institute. While at the University of Kansas, Breanna was a recipient of the Zakoura Collaborative Pianist Scholarship. Much of her pianistic time was spent collaborating with instrumentalists and vocalists from all realms, often in premieres of new works by colleagues in composition. Regarding hornistic studies while studying at KU, she was assistant then fourth horn of the Topeka Symphony Orchestra, the first job she won at age 20.
Breanna graduated with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA under full Presidential and Merit Scholarship with her master's degree in horn performance, studying with James Sommerville, principal horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During her time there, she also earned her Music-In-Education Concentration under the guidance of movement-founder Larry Scripp. She received her undergraduate degrees from the University of Kansas School of Music in horn performance, studying with Paul Stevens, and piano performance, studying with Jack Winerock. For the 2016-17 academic year, Breanna was Interim Professor of Horn at Fort Hays State University where she was also a collaborative pianist for the horn studio and vocal studios. When not pursuing musical endeavors, she loves teaching English online to students all over the world, planning her worldwide backpacking trip, and transcribing jazz solos on piano.
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 17, "Little Russia"
Maurice Ravel "Pavane pour une infante défunte"
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G minor, "The Year 1905"
Halvorsen: "Hungarian" from "Miniatures" for Violin and Piano
Katherine Red, violin; Stara Zagora Public Library, Bulgaria, December 2018
original songs / compositions along with assorted excerpts from live concerts
in Jordan Hall during grad school at NEC, 2013-2015
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“And again, there were wonderful solos, especially from Breanna Ellison, who intoned the essential horn part with nobility.”
- Boston Musical Intelligencer
“The other motif representing Till is the famous laughing French horn call heard a number of times through the work: Breanna Ellison was flawless in execution and vivid in characterization.”
- Boston Musical Intelligencer
“After but a few words and a single musical illustration, that of the very low notes of the fourth horn part in the Overture to Der Freischütz, excellently sounded by Breanna Ellison, the BPO set the concert in fine motion with the Carl Maria von Weber. In this woodland setting, all four horns in the hunt melded a golden classicism.”
- Boston Musical Intelligencer
There are thousands of so-called expats in Bulgaria. Some paint, others grow vegetables, some are diplomats, teachers or pensioners, at least one is setting up a goat farm, a few sell beer and food, and many work for call centres or in the IT world.
In the coming weeks, at least one more expatriate will be moving to Bulgaria, the land of feta cheese, rose oil and stunning mountain ranges: Breanna Ellison is from Kansas. And she does a whole lot. Apart from playing the French horn in orchestras, and the piano, she teaches music. Breanna is also a photographer and a travel blogger. Yes, one and the same person does all of that...
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