2024 NORTHWEST ALPHORN WORKSHOP

Leading the faculty this year will be

 Dr. Natalie Douglass Grana.    

Dr. Grana is a hornist and educator based in Chicago, IL. Her integrative approach to teaching horn through singing and inner hearing has garnered international recognition, and she has worked with hundreds of students to develop fluency as hornists and as complete musicians.

Dr. Grana is currently on faculty at DePaul University, Loyola University, and Lake Forest College in Chicago and previously served as Assistant Professor of Horn and head of brass at Utah Valley University in Orem, UT.  Dr. Grana is an authority on inner hearing and solfege training and specializes in transferring these skills to horn performance. Her pedagogy and teaching philosophies are greatly inspired by Zoltan Kodály, and she spent the 2015-2016 academic year on a U.S. Fulbright Grant to the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy of Music in Kecskemét, Hungary. She has appeared at numerous International Horn Society Symposia and regional horn workshops, has been a keynote speaker and clinician for NAfME, and has served as a visiting academic at Oxford University in Oxford, UK. Her masterclasses are in demand for hornists, brass players, and music educators alike. She has been a guest artist at some of the world’s finest musical institutions, including the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague (The Hague, Netherlands), the Royal Academy of Music (London, UK), the San Francisco Conservatory and the New England Conservatory (Boston, MA). She has taught horn and led the musicianship curriculum at the renowned Kendall Betts Horn Camp since 2013. Her book, "A Singing Approach to Horn Playing," is available through Oxford University Press.
 

As a performer, Dr. Grana is hornist with the Gaudete Brass, a Chicago-based brass quintet that actively commissions new pieces and performs across the country. She additionally performs regularly with the Alloy Horn Quartet, also based in Chicago. Her performance experience also includes performing with the Chicago Philharmonic, Boston Brass, Quad Cities Symphony, Utah Symphony, Louisville Symphony, Kentucky Symphony, and Illinois Symphony. She has played in backup ensembles for musicians like Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Mannheim Steamroller. While in Utah, she also recorded musical soundtracks, video game music, and film scores for various recording studios in Salt Lake City. She has toured under the batons of Lorin Maazel and Krzysztof Penderecki and performed in venues across Germany, Austria, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland, and Oman.

Grana is an enthusiastic proponent of the alphorn. She is on faculty at the Northwest Alphorn Workshop, the University of Nevada Lake Tahoe Alphorn Seminar, the Windy City Alphorn Workshop in Chicago, and the Alphorn Institute. She has performed and given masterclasses across the United States and abroad, including at the 2023 IHS Symposium in Montreal, with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and at the Festival International de Cor des Alpes in Nendaz, Switzerland. She is an alphornist with Salzburger Echo and the Performing Artist for Alpensong, a premier US alphorn retailer.

Dr. Grana holds a D.M.A. in Horn Performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and an MM in Horn Performance and BME in Instrumental Music Education from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her principal teachers include Randy Gardner, Bernhard Scully, Thomas Jostlein, and Kazimerz Machala. She studied solfege and voice under Agnes Gerges-Gal and Renata Darazs of the Liszt Academy of Music, Hungary.

 Jim Hopson is a JUNO Award-nominated trombonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and educator based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He has been called a music industry ‘Game Changer’, and his body of work as a performer crosses every genre and includes tours and appearances (live & recorded) all over the world. A dedicated educator, he has taught private lessons and clinics to thousands of young musicians, and has conducted student ensembles of all ages and abilities. He is a first-call arranger for bands and orchestras throughout BC, and his arrangements have been featured on numerous albums, TV shows, and films. His two studio albums ‘West Coast Nights’ (2015) and ‘Generations’ (2018) are available on Bandcamp and in our Store. 

  William G. Rose is Associate Professor of Music at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA, teaching low brass and music theory. He directs the McNeese State University Alphorn Ensemble, a unique, one-of-a-kind university ensemble, which maintains an active performing schedule in Southwest Louisiana.

He performs as principal trombonist with the Lake Charles Symphony (Lake Charles, LA) and Rapides Symphony Orchestra (Alexandria, LA), as well has having performed as principal trombonist of the Milwaukee Civic Orchestra, the Concordia Chamber Orchestra, Music Under the Stars, bass trombone with the Detroit Chamber Winds, substitute bass and tenor trombone with the Milwaukee Symphony, principal trombone with the Shreveport Symphony and principal and bass trombone with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra. He participated in the alphorn competition at the Festival International des Cor de Alps in Nendaz, Switzerland in 2017 and 2022; and in 2022, had two compositions for solo alphorn performed (including the solo “A Gentle Jodel,” premiered by fellow alphorn artist Dr. Natalie Grana!).

As a published composer and arranger, his catalog includes works for band, orchestra, jazz ensemble, choir, handbells, brass ensemble and alphorn solo and ensemble compositions. Five of his original alphorn works have been performed/premiered at International Horn Society Workshops: in 2013 (Memphis, TN), at Ball State (Muncie, IN) in 2019, and in 2022 at Texas A&M (Kingsville, TX). Mr. Rose is a founding member of the LATEX Trombone Quartet; has served as an instructor for the Midwest Alphorn Retreat and the NorthWest Alphorn Workshop; and is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

 Yannick Wey is a Senior Research Associate at the Competence Center for Music Education Research at Lucerne School of Music, Switzerland. He received a BA and an MA in Trumpet Performance from Zurich University of the Arts and a PhD in Musicology from the University of Innsbruck. In his PhD thesis, he analyzed the musical transcription of the Alpine yodel and related wordless song and the interactions between their oral and written traditions. His current projects inhabit the spaces between ethnography, music analysis, and performance. He plays the traditional wind instruments of the Alpine region, the Alphorn and Büchel. His research has appeared in Analytical Approaches to World Music, Music & Science, The Galpin Society Journal, Musicologist, and the Swiss Yearbook for Musicology.