Multi-instrumentalist Dr. Margaret McGillivray has been hailed as a musical “force of nature” and dynamic educator. Originally from the wide open skies of the Canadian Prairies, Margaret spent most of her formative years in Newmarket, Ontario. She completed her degree in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music before finishing high school.  Going on to McGill University in Montreal for further study, this time in Horn Performance, she followed up with a Master’s in Horn Performance and Literature from Northwestern University.  Her principal teachers have included some of the finest horn players in the world: John Zirbel, Gail Williams, Marty Hackleman, David Krehbiel, Bill Barnewitz and Daniel Katzen.  
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Dr. McGillivray has played and taught in Canada, England, Germany, France, Sweden, Japan and the US. She has given several premieres, including the US premieres of Keith Bissell’s Sonata for Horn and the Southwest premieres of Jacques Hetu’s Cor-Jupitre and Elizabeth Raum’s Romance. Alongside championing the work of underrepresented composers, she is also passionate about bringing the works of Canadian composers to a wider international audience.

Margaret holds the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Arizona where her research into the connection between singing and horn playing culminated in the capstone project, “The Singing Horn Player” as well as three new transcriptions of vocal arias for horn. She has developed workshops on this subject and a vocal approach informs her teaching methods with beginners and advanced musicians alike.
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An active performer, Dr. McGillivray has played with many ensembles in the Southwest, including the Phoenix Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Arizona Opera Orchestra, New Mexico Philharmonic and the Santa Fe Symphony.  Since arriving in the Mid-Atlantic, Margaret has appeared with such orchestras as the National and Baltimore Symphonies, New Orchestra of Washington, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, Concert Artists of Baltimore, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, and the Lancaster and  Richmond Symphonies. She is also on faculty at Towson University and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. When not writing, teaching practicing for some musical shenanigans or running children to swim practice, she spends time hiking, cooking and laughing with her husband, and loving on one hairy english setter named Lefse.

Founded in 2017, Cobalt Quartet is a professional horn quartet comprised of four female hornists and educators, Jena Gardner, Katie Johnson-Webb, Caroline Steiger and Rose Valby. In August 2018, Cobalt Quartet won the professional division of the International Horn Society’s Horn Quartet Competition. Cobalt Quartet has given performances and masterclasses across the United States. Members of the ensemble hold positions at Western Illinois University, Texas State University, The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and in the United States Air Force Band of the West. Through their performances and master classes, the Cobalt Quartet is dedicated to educating, engaging, and entertaining audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Wing Lam (Sarah) Au is a freelance Horn performer and educator based in Austin, TX.  Dr. Au regularly performs with several regional orchestras in Texas, including the Central Texas Philharmonic, Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra, Temple Symphony Orchestra, Symphony of Southeast Texas, and La Follia Baroque.  A proponent of new music, she is a frequent collaborator with Austin-based new music ensemble Density512 and has also appeared with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. Her performances have taken her across the globe, including concerts in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Dr. Au currently serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Horn at Austin Community College and as Adjunct Horn Instructor at Texas A&M – Kingsville.  A committed arts advocate, she is a founding Board member of the Austin Brass Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization dedicated to bringing excellent and accessible brass performance and educational experiences to the Central Texas community. Dr. Au holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from The University of Texas at Austin, where she served as Teaching Assistant for the Horn Studio in 2016-17 and received a Diversity Continuing Fellowship. She also holds an Orchestral Performance Certificate from Manhattan School of Music, a Master of Music from Yale University as well as degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.

Jena Gardner, D.M.A., is the Assistant Professor of Horn at Western Illinois University and a member of the Cobalt Horn Quartet, the Lamoine Brass Quintet, and the Camerata Woodwind Quintet. In addition to teaching, she is an active soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player throughout Illinois and the United States. Dr. Gardner has performed extensively around the world including tours in Europe, Mexico, and Japan. She has been a guest section member with the Chicago Lyric Opera, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain horn sections and was acting 2nd and 4th horn of the Louisiana Philharmonic orchestra for the 2012 and 2013 seasons respectively.  Dr. Gardner completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at Northwestern University under the guidance of  Gail Williams and Jon Boen. She holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in horn performance from Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern Universities. For more information visit www.gardnerhorn.com

Katie Johnson excels as a flexible, thoughtful, and active performer of solo repertoire, chamber music, and orchestral literature.  In past years has performed with the Aspen Summer Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Kent/Blossom Music Festival in Kent, Ohio, and the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. She has given recitals and masterclasses across the United States and is a founding member of the award-winning Cobalt Quartet. Katie is the Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the direction of Professor Emeritus Douglas Hill and Professor Daniel Grabois.  In 2018, she was awarded a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation to collaborate with Norwegian hornist and pedagogue, Frøydis Ree Wekre in Oslo, Norway. In 2020, Katie released her first solo CD, La Loba, on the Summit Records label.

Dr Caroline Steiger is currently Associate Professor of Horn at Texas State University (TXST), a position she has held since 2016. Prior to this she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Horn at SUNY Potsdam, and studied at University of Michigan (D.M.A., B.M.) and Penn State University (M.M.) studying with Adam Unsworth, Lisa Bontrager, Bryan Kennedy, Corbin Wagner, and Soren Hermansson. A sought-after chamber and orchestral musician, Dr Steiger has performed with the Detroit Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, San Antonio Philharmonic, Toledo Symphony, and the Mid-Texas Symphony. She is a founding member of the Cobalt Quartet, and has presented and performed at numerous IHS international and regional symposiums, TMEA, CMS/ATMI conferences.