Michael Hosford

Michael Hosford studied at Oberlin Conservatory with trombonist/composer Raymond Premru and at Aspen Music Festival with composer Charles Jones, later moving to New York to complete Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in trombone performance at the Juilliard School, studying with Per Brevig (Metropolitan Opera) and Michael Powell (American Brass Quintet).

In New York, Michael spent eleven years as a freelancer, performing with such world-class ensembles as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, and for the Broadway productions of The King and I, 1776, Candide, Les Miserables, The Music Man, Parade, and The Lion King.

Mr. Hosford currently holds positions as Co-Principal Trombone in the Greenville (SC) Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Principal Trombone of the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, and is an active freelancer, performing with orchestras around the Southeast including the Charlotte Symphony, Asheville Symphony, and IRIS Orchestra.  He has also served as Principal Trombone and Orchestra Librarian of the Sarasota Opera Orchestra, Acting 2nd Trombone of the Jacksonville Symphony (Florida), Principal Trombone of the New Haven Symphony, 2nd Trombone of the Charleston Symphony, and was a member of the award-winning Saturday Brass Quintet.

Alongside his performing career, Mr. Hosford has been composing and arranging music since his early teens. His works range from solo to symphonic, but he particularly enjoys writing music for odd little groups of instruments. His concert music has been performed at Lincoln Center and broadcast on WNCN radio in New York City, and his brass fanfares have been heard on Young People’s Concerts at the Colorado Music Festival and have inspired (or at least awakened) patrons on opening nights at the Sarasota Opera. One of his fanfares was recently selected and performed by Boston Brass as part of their “25 Fanfares Project.”

Mr. Hosford finds teaching a natural complement to performing. Instrumentally, he has served on the brass faculties of Charleston Southern University (South Carolina), the Academy of Music (Norfolk, VA), as a substitute trombone teacher in the Juilliard Pre-College Division, and has taught privately in every place he has lived. Academically, he has taught classes in the Ear Training Department at Juilliard as a recipient of a teaching fellowship and in Music Theory at the New York School for Strings.