Biography

My mom is a professional cellist, and my aunt is a professional violinist, so music has been a big part of my life since I was very young. I began playing the violin at the age of four, and I started on the horn at age 11 as part of a school band.

It wasn’t long before I fell in love with the horn, and I focused on it more and more as I got older. Throughout high school I was very serious about horn, but I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted to do for a career. I started at Oberlin College and Conservatory as a double-degree student and spent my first two years exploring every subject in the college I could think of. I took classes in philosophy, French, archaeology, history, religion, creative writing, and astronomy. I finally settled on philosophy, but I didn’t feel as passionate about it as I did about music. So at the end of my second year, I decided to focus all of my energy on horn.

After graduating from Oberlin I attended the Yale School of Music for three years, earning both a Masters of Music and a Masters of Musical Arts in Horn Performance.

I am passionate about contemporary music as well as music that is underperformed and underrepresented in classical music. While I was in graduate school at Yale I performed a recital of works by women composers, and gave an accompanying lecture on the importance of representation and the traditional exclusion of women from the classical canon.

I also have a passion for community outreach programming, which has fuelled some of my most formative experiences. While at Yale I organized a concert with IRIS, a refugee organization in Connecticut, that featured traditional music from non-western cultures. I also performed in a concert for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and a fundraising concert for Every Town for Gun Safety, an organization founded after the 2012 massacre in Newtown, CT.

Along with playing the horn I am also an early music singer, and have performed professionally with the Yale Schola Cantorum, Christ Church New Haven, and Trinity Episcopal Southport choirs in the U.S., and toured internationally to India, Spain, and Scandinavia. In my free time I enjoy reading, snuggling with my cat Stella, and spending time with friends. I also enjoy hiking and going to art museums. I am very excited to explore London!

Education

Yale School of Music
New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Oberlin Conservatory
Oberlin, Ohio, USA

Quickfire Questions

What is your favourite piece of music and why do you love it?
It is hard to pick a favourite piece of music, but certainly in my top 5 is Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles. It is an hour-long choral work about El Camino de Santiago, the ancient Christian pilgrimage route to Santiago, Spain. I performed this piece with Yale Schola Cantorum on a tour through Spain, where we performed it in churches that are significant pilgrimage sites along the Camino. It was an incredible experience!

How would you persuade someone who has never heard ‘classical music’ before to come with you to a concert?
I think to someone unfamiliar with it, classical music is often assumed to be stale, old, and one-note (pardon the pun.) I would persuade someone to come with me to a concert by showing them that the genre is varied in style, form, and emotion. It can make you feel any range of emotions, as well as feel an incredible sense of community with the rest of the audience because you are sharing a common experience.

Antonia is a member of the 2020-2021 fellowship.