William Scharnberg, Horn

William Scharnberg, horn, graduated from the University of Iowa with bachelors through DMA degrees, studying horn with Paul Anderson. During summers, in addition to performing in the Pierre Monteux festival, he studied with Louis Stout and Philip Farkas. His first professional position was fourth horn with the Tri-City Symphony (Iowa) in 1968. There he moved to third horn, then principal over four years. He has performed as principal horn of the Dallas Opera (1984-2016), Dallas Symphony, Dallas Ballet, Dallas Chamber Orchestra, Tacoma Symphony, Flathead Festival Orchestra, Royal Opera Orchestra (Stockholm), Breckenridge Music Festival, Big Sky Orchestra, Intermountain Opera, and has been principal horn of the Wichita Falls Symphony (Texas) since 2007. He performed in faculty chamber ensembles while teaching horn and various classes at Central Missouri State University, Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Oklahoma, the Royal Academy of Music (Stockholm), and the University of North Texas (1983-2018) — where he retired as a Regents Professor with a class of fifty horn students. He served the International Horn Society as President (1990-92), Advisory Council member (1986-92 and 1999-2003), Editor of the The Horn Call (1983-2018), and hosted two International Horn Symposia. In addition to performing recitals at several universities and concerti with regional orchestras, he has recorded on Crystal, EcoClassics, Centaur, and Klavier labels, and published editions of eighteenth and nineteenth-century horn works. He commissioned and premiered compositions by Paul Chihara, David Maslanka, Cindy McTee, Anthony Plog, and Kim Scharnberg.