Our Artists
Geoffrey Pilkington
Geoffrey Pilkington was appointed Principal Horn of the Washington National Opera at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2014, after ten years of holding the Fourth Horn position in the same orchestra. In 2011, he also joined the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal/Third Horn and was featured as a soloist, performing Schumann’s Konzertstuck for four horns and orchestra. Geoffrey completed his undergraduate degree at The Juilliard School studying with Julie Landsman, and spent a year abroad at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying with Michael Thompson and Richard Watkins.
Geoffrey has been awarded grand prizes at the International Horn Competition of America, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and The Florida Orchestra Young Artist Concerto Competition. Additionally, he has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and as Guest Principal Horn with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and The Florida Orchestra. He was featured as a soloist in the 2016 Wagner Ring Cycles at the Kennedy Center, and has joined the San Francisco Opera for six complete Ring Cycles in 2011, and 2018.
Geoffrey has participated in the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival in South Africa, Spoleto Festival- Italy, Eastern Music Festival, Artosphere Festival Orchestra, and performs Chamber music with The Van Buren Winds, Market Square Concert Series and Kingston Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Pilkington is also on faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. He and his wife, Kathryn, met while they were studying at Juilliard. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Washington DC’s modern dance troupe, “Company E”, as well as a modern dance instructor at George Mason University. They live in Burke, VA with their sons Gavin and Colin.
Nathaniel Silberschlag
Nathaniel Silberschlag, 22, was appointed Principal Horn of The Cleveland Orchestra in May 2019, and took up the position in August prior to the start of the 2019-20 season. He previously served as Assistant Principal Horn of the Washington National Opera/Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra, where he was the youngest member ever to win a position with the ensemble, at the age of 19. He completed his bachelor of music degree from New York's Juilliard School in May 2019, where he was a student of Julie Landsman and recipient of the Kovner Fellowship.
Born in Leonardtown, Maryland, in the Chesapeake region, Mr. Silberschlag comes from of a family of sixteen professional musicians across several generations. These include former principal players of the New York Philharmonic, Italian National Orchestra RAI, and Jerusalem Symphony. He is the third generation of his family to attend the Juilliard School. He made his debut in Italy at age 9, with news of the performance appearing on the front page of Italy’s newspaper La Stampa.
As soloist, Nathaniel has performed with the Juilliard Orchestra, Bulgarian Philharmonic, Romania State Symphony, New York’s Little Orchestra Society, and the Chesapeake Orchestra. He has also played concerts with a variety of ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
At the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Silberschlag became a graduate of the National Symphony Orchestra Youth Fellowship program under the tutelage of Sylvia Alimena as part of her "Brass of Peace" scholarship program. He also spent two summers in the Kennedy Center’s Summer Music Institute. He was a fellow at the Music Academy of the West in the summers of 2017 and 2018, and in 2018 was named one of ten Zarin Mehta Fellows to perform with the New York Philharmonic as part of their 2018 Global Academy. In 2015, he was the first recipient of the Edwin C. Thayer / Laurel Bennert Ohlson award for artistry and excellence in horn performance. Since 2007, he has been a full participant fellow at Italy's Alba Music Festival, and also attended the Eastern Music Festival in 2016. He is also a member of the New York Festival Brass Quintet.
Julie Landsman
Principal horn with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 25 years, Julie Landsman is a distinguished performing artist and educator. She received a bachelor of music degree from The Juilliard School in 1975 under the tutelage of James Chambers and Ranier De Intinis, and has served as a member of the Juilliard faculty since 1989.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Landsman achieved her dream of becoming principal of the MET in 1985 and held that position until 2010. She has also shared her talent to many other ensembles within the city as a current member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and having performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic. Additionally, she has performed with numerous groups outside the city, including her co-principal position with the Houston Symphony, substitute principal position with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and recent performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra as Associate principal horn, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, principal horn.
She has recorded for RCA, Deutsche Gramophone, CRI, Nonesuch and Vanguard labels, and is most famous for her performance of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle as solo horn with the MET Opera under the direction of James Levine. Landsman has performed as chamber musician at many festivals and concert series, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri Quartet. In the summers she performs and teaches at the Music Academy of the West , the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival.
World renowned as a master teacher, Julie Landsman holds faculty positions at The Juilliard School and Bard College Conservatory, and teaches frequently as a guest at the Curtis Institute. She has presented master classes at such distinguished institutions as The Colburn School, Curtis Institute, Eastman School of Music, Mannes College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, USC Thornton School of Music, Cal State Long Beach, Rowan University, University of Oklahoma, and University of Southern Mississippi, to name a few. She is also a visiting master teacher at the New World Symphony in Miami. Her international presence includes master classes in Norway, Sweden, and Israel. In 2016 Landsman was an honored jury member at the ARD horn competition in Munich, Germany.
Her students hold positions in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras, Washington National Opera Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Colorado Symphony, and the American Brass Quintet. She recently received the “Pioneer Award” from the International Women’s Brass Conference and was a featured artist at the International Horn Society Conference in 2012 and 2015.
Her recent series of Carmine Caruso lessons on YouTube have led to further fame and renown among today’s generation of horn players. Landsman currently resides in Nyack, New York.
Michelle Reed Baker
Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, Michelle Reed Baker earned her Bachelor of Music from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston— where she studied with Julie Landsman, Nancy Goodearl, and Jay Andrus —and her Master of Music at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of James Chambers.
Michelle was second horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 1990-2017. Prior, she was a member of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and a regular substitute with the New York Philharmonic.
Her new life finds her focusing on teaching, spending time with family, and free-lancing (performing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Mostly Mozart, Montclair Orchestra, ProMusica, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony and The All Star Orchestra).
Michelle serves on the faculty of Montclair State University, and Manhattan School of Music where she is also the Chair of the Brass Department. She has given master classes at Juilliard, Texas Music Festival, Boston University, North Carolina School of the Arts, Western Michigan University, Kinhaven, New England Conservatory, California State Long Beach, Cincinnati Conservatory, University of Georgia, and the University of Delaware to name a few. The International Horn Society featured her in its “Ask the Pros” series in 2009. She appears each summer at Music on the Hill in Rhode Island. She has also taught and coached at the Round Top Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Music Academy of the West and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.
Michelle has performed several times with Michael Buble and Sting, recorded and performed with James Taylor and Harry Connick, Jr., and can be heard on the soundtracks for several movies such as The Greatest Showman, The Good Shepherd, True Grit, Failure to Launch, Manchurian Candidate, Hail Caesar!, Moonrise Kingdom, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Zoolander 2.
Her recordings include the Hindemith Sonata for Alto Horn with pianist David Korevaar on the Kleos Classics label. Michelle also commissioned and recorded a piece for low horn entitled Imaginings, written by Dorothy Gates
Julia Pilant
Julia Pilant is the Assistant Principal Horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a horn instructor at Bard College Conservatory of Music. Before joining the Met, Ms. Pilant was Principal Horn with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra for 10 years, after which, she returned to New York City where she performed frequently with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, The Orchestra of St. Luke's, American Symphony Orchestra, The Stamford Symphony, and various Broadway shows.
In addition, she has played principal horn for the Saito Kinen and Tokyo Opera Nomori music festivals and the Mito Chamber Orchestra in Japan (Seiji Ozawa, music director), has been a principal horn and participant in the Festivale di Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy), Bard, OK Mozart and Santa Fe Chamber music festivals, as well as a guest artist with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 1994, she won the American Horn Competition. Ms. Pilant received her Bachelor's degree from Eastman (student of Verne Reynolds), and her Master's and Doctoral degrees from Juilliard (student of Julie Landsman).
Wei-Ping Chou
Praised by the New York Times for her "consistent, strong" and "smooth and full" horn playing, Wei-Ping is the second horn of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra/Washington National Opera Orchestra. A native of Taoyuan, Taiwan, she began playing the horn at the age of nine and continued her studies at the Idyllwild Arts Academy under Kurt Snyder. She received her bachelor's degree from the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Jerome Ashby, and her Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Julie Landsman. She was the first horn player in Juilliard School history to be awarded the Artist Diploma.
Wei-Ping held the fourth horn position in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra/Washington National Opera Orchestra from 2014 through 2017, and was acting assistant principal horn for the San Diego Symphony from 2007 to 2011. She has performed with a variety of orchestras and chamber groups, including the National Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, American Symphony Orchestra, the Knights, Wind Soloists of New York, and Genghis Barbie. As a chamber musician, she spent many summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and performs on "Musicians from Marlboro" tours. She has appeared as a guest artist at the Chesapeake Music Festival, Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music, Artosphere Music Festival, and Lake Champlain Music Festival. Wei-Ping was featured as a soloist, performing the Gliere Concerto, with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra.
An avid educator, Wei-Ping has been the horn faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University since 2018. She has also taught on the horn faculty for NYO2 (National Youth Orchestra 2) in 2017 and 2019. When not playing the horn, Wei-Ping enjoys cooking, baking, crafting, and last but definitely not least, flying trapeze!
Robert Rearden
Robert Rearden joined the National Symphony Orchestra horn section in 2016. He previously served as principal horn of the Florida Orchestra from 2010–2016. He has performed regularly as a guest musician with the Cleveland Orchestra since 2004, including multiple recordings and tours of Europe, Asia, and the U.S., and was a member of the New World Symphony from 2006–2010. He also appeared frequently as guest principal horn of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 2010–2015. Rearden has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, All-Star Orchestra, Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, and with the Mainly Mozart, Britt, Artosphere, Steamboat Springs, Spoleto USA and Eastern music festival orchestras.
He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina as a student of Robert Pruzin and earned a Master of Music degree and artist diploma at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a student of Eli Epstein and Richard Solis. He also studied with Julie Landsman and with David Wakefield. He was a fellowship recipient at Tanglewood and the Aspen Music Festival. While with the Florida Orchestra, Rearden appeared as a soloist on several occasions, and was also a featured soloist on the orchestra's most recent recording. He was a featured artist at the 2017 Southeast Horn Workshop, and has also taught masterclasses in Havana, Cuba, at the universities of Houston and South Florida, and at the Kent-Blossom and Eastern music festivals. Rearden teaches horn at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Rivard
Kevin Rivard joined the San Francisco Opera Orchestra as Co-Principal French Horn in 2008. Known for his "delicious quality of tone", he also holds the position of Principal Horn in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Music@Menlo, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Winner of numerous solo competitions, he was awarded Grand Prize at the 2008 Concours International d'Interpretation Musicale in Paris, the 2007 International Horn Competition of America and the 2003 Farkas Solo Horn competition.
Mr. Rivard has served as guest Principal Horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and performed with the Philadelphia and Metropolitan Opera Orchestras. He was also a featured soloist with the Houston Symphony. Previous positions include the Colorado Symphony and Florida Orchestra. A Juilliard graduate, Mr. Rivard has performed with Santa Fe Opera, the Sarasota Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music and the Verbier Music Festivals. As the Horn professor at San Jose State University, Mr. Rivard loves teaching and inspiring young students. Every year he volunteers at local schools, performing for youth hoping to give as many children as possible the opportunity to enjoy live music.