Hazel Dean Davis is an in-demand French hornist performing throughout New England and beyond. She held the solo horn chair in the revival of 1776 on Broadway and on the National Tour in 2022-2023, is a member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and appears frequently with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pops, Portland Symphony, the Boston Ballet, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and A Far Cry. She was a member of the Virginia Symphony and Opera from 2004-2015. In her Boston solo debut on Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, The Boston Musical Intelligencer praised her “masterful colorings and sensitivity to text.”

Recent highlights include a series of solo and chamber recitals exploring how the concept of “space” shifted during the pandemic; tours of the East Coast, California, Texas, and Florida with the Boston Pops; a tour of China and Taiwan with the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops; and a double-horn recital with Cincinnati Symphony principal hornist Elizabeth Freimuth. During the 2015-2016 season, she spent ten weeks with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including an appearance at Carnegie Hall. She can be heard on numerous BSO recordings, notably Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 which won a 2016 Grammy award, and Strauss’ Alpine Symphony and Sinfonia Domestica.

A passionate chamber musician, Ms. Davis plays with Chamber Music Boston and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and has been featured in the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Series, where critics called her “the star of the show…she played with complete security and authority… whether asked for leaps, trills, or long beautiful sustained notes” (Virginian Pilot). She has also appeared at Marlboro Music, the Pacific Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival.

Ms. Davis teaches at Boston University and Longy School of Music in Cambridge and maintains a private studio in Arlington. She spends her summers as a faculty artist and teacher at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina.

In addition to her performing career, Ms. Davis is a fierce advocate for musicians, and in 2020 co-founded the New England Musicians Relief Fund (NEMRF) in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, NEMRF has raised over half a million dollars and provided hundreds of freelance musicians in New England with direct relief grants.

Hazel Dean Davis graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Biological and Social Anthropology. While at Harvard, she studied horn with James Sommerville and was active in the chamber and orchestral music scene, receiving both the David McCord Prize for Music and the Louis Sudler Top Senior Prize in the Arts. She received a Graduate Performance Diploma from Julliard where she studied with Julie Landsman and was a Tanglewood Fellow. Other teachers include Caroline Lemen and Kendall Betts.

Ms. Davis lives with her husband Steve, children Moon, Nadia, and Kalle, a cat, a dog, and a tortoise. When not playing the horn, you will find her running around the Arlington reservoir, sipping coffee at her favorite coffee shops, making granola, marching for minority and women’s rights, reading up on the latest discoveries in human evolution, and playing board games or crafting with her kids.