Summary
Aaron Hill serves as Assistant Professor of oboe and classical saxophone at the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to moving to Reno, he held appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Virginia and James Madison University. He appears frequently on oboe, English horn, and saxophone with the Reno Philharmonic and Reno Chamber Orchestra and he has held positions as principal oboe with the Charlottesville Symphony, Wintergreen Music Festival Orchestra, and Flint Symphony, and English horn with the Roanoke Symphony. His academic affiliations have included extensive chamber music involvement with the Wingra Wind Quintet and Albemarle Ensemble.
Hill enjoys a performing career with constant stylistic variety. Hill regularly premieres works by living composers in partnership with reNEW Music and has performed as a guest with the International Contemporary Ensemble. He travels around North America as an active recitalist and masterclass clinician and has been a featured speaker at the TEDxSkidRow and Tom Tom Founders Festival conferences, along with a featured guest appearance on the Double Reed Dish and Detours in Music podcasts. He has performed on Baroque Oboe as a member of the Madison Bach Musicians. As a soloist, he was awarded the Grand Prize in the Mu Phi Epsilon Society for Musical Arts Competition, the Leche Trust Prize at the Barbirolli International Oboe Competition and won the Yamaha Young Performing Artists National Competition. He also performs frequently as an artist in residence with Street Symphony, collaborating with musicians in Los Angeles experiencing homelessness and incarceration.
Always active as an orchestral musician, Hill has performed as Principal Oboe with the Ann Arbor Symphony, Flint Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Richmond Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic and Saginaw Bay Symphony, and has also appeared with the Elgin, Hartford, Rockford, San Diego and Virginia symphonies. He played Principal Oboe on William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience with Leonard Slatkin, a recording for Naxos that won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album.
Hill earned his bachelor of music degree with highest honors from the University of Michigan and holds a master of music degree and an artist diploma from the Yale School of Music, where he received the Thomas Nyfenger Memorial Prize for Outstanding Woodwind Performance. He completed his doctor of musical arts degree in performance, pedagogy and literature at James Madison University. He also holds additional pedagogical certifications from the Gordon Institute of Music Learning and Marianne Ploger's Institute for Musical Perception. He has participated in several music festivals, including Classical Tahoe, Tahoe Chamber Music Series, Music Academy of the West, Schleswig-Holstein Orchesterakademie, Chamber Music Unbound, Banff Centre, New York String Orchestra Seminar, Charlottesville Opera, Henry Mancini Institute, Sarasota Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival and Interlochen Arts Camp. His oboe teachers include Nancy Ambrose King, Richard Killmer, Stephen Taylor and David Weiss. Hill plays a maple Fox Sayen 880 oboe, made in South Whitley, Indiana.
Education
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DMA, performance, pedagogy and literature, James Madison University, 2015
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MM, Yale School of Music, 2007
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BM, University of Michigan, 2004