Martin-Williams, Jean

Horn player from Decatur, Georgia, who attended the Brevard Music Center, Lawrence University, and the Manhattan School of Music, where she became the first brass musician to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts.

Groups with whom she has worked include the Atlanta Horn Club, the Atlanta Opera Orchestra, the College Music Society, the Georgia Woodwind Quintet, the International Horn Society, the Metropolitan Opera, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the New York Pops, the University of Georgia Horn Choir, the University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra, and the Zephyr Brass Trio.

In 1990, she joined the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia—another first—she was the first tenured female in the brass, percussion and woodwinds department. She became a member of the horn faculty at the Brevard Music Center a few years later.

In 2000, she and Karl Kramer helped Wolfgang Plagge give the world premiere of his “Raga, Op. 106” at the University of Georgia.

She gave a faculty recital at the Brevard Music Center on 26^th July 2006. The all-Mozart program featured the Austrian master’s “Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon and Piano in E-flat, K. 452”.

On 2^nd October 2008, the University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra offered up Mozart’s “Sinfonie Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon and Orchestra” and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 5”.

Jean and oboist Dwight Manning, clarinetist D. Ray McClellan and pianist Martha Thomas helped bassoonist William Davis premiere his “Quintet for Piano and Winds”, a work commissioned by the Georgia Music Teachers Association, in the winter of 2009.

In 2012, the University of Georgia bestowed their highest honour on her, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship. They have also given her the Sandy Beaver Award for her accomplishments in the undergraduate program.

She celebrated the 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time at the Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, on 14^th October 2012. The musical portion of the service included “Agnus Dei” by Paul Basler and “Serenade for Horn and Organ” by Craig Phillips.

On 8^th November 2012, the Georgia Woodwind Quintet presented “A Southern Wind Serenade” at the University of Georgia that included a wind arrangement of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”.

In addition to her aforementioned educational achievements, she has served as an artist faculty member at Bennington College, a board member of the Brevard Music Center and Clarke County School District, peer teaching consultant at Franklin Residential College, chair of the brass section at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, adjudicator, board member and host of the International Horn Competition of America, lecturer at Juilliard, and director of the University of Georgia Horn Choir.

She performs here…

Sources:

Martin-Williams, Jean

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