Willie Ruff has been one of the pioneers of the horn in jazz, as a duo has performed at thousands of schools and colleges, and has been an international ambassador of music, from Africa to Russia and China.

Willie was born in Sheffield, Alabama, which is in the area known as Muscle Shoals, famous for freshwater mussels, W.C. Handy, Helen Keller, and music recording studios. Willie was one of eight children, and his father left the family before Willie was a year old. His mother died from tuberculosis when Willie was 13.

The schools were segregated at this time, and Willie attended a poor school for blacks, but the teachers valued music. Willie remembered a visit by W.C. Handy, who played a trumpet and explained his music to the students, and later the school had a part-time band director. Willie started singing as a child and learned drumming from a neighbor and piano at church. He also learned to play the "hambone" – using hands against parts of the body such as chest and thighs, a technique developed by slaves when their traditional drums where outlawed.

After his mother died, Willie went to live with his father and attend high school in Evansville, Indiana. The next year, in 1946, at age 14, he lied about his age, forged his father's signature, and joined the Army on the expectation of developing a career as a drummer. When the band had too many percussionists and the horns (playing mellophones – "peck horns") were the weakest section, Willie volunteered to learn to play the horn. He learned on his own from an Oscar Franz method book, practicing in the boiler room.

When Willie was 16 years old and playing in the band at segregated Lockbourne Air force Base near Columbus, Ohio, he started taking lessons from Abe Kniaz, first horn in the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra. He discovered that he had been using incorrect fingerings and soon improved his technique, musical knowledge, and other knowledge under Kniaz's guidance. It was while stationed at Lockbourne that Willie met his future duo partner, Dwike Mitchell. Willie also learned to play bass at Dwike's urging and earned his high school equivalency diploma.

Willie left the service to attend Yale University, from which he held both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Upon receiving his master’s degree in 1954, he tried to win a position with an American symphony orchestra, but found that black musicians were not yet welcome in those ranks. Instead, he accepted a position with the Tel Aviv Symphony. Not long before he was to leave, he happened to watch The Ed Sullivan Show and saw not only Lionel Hampton’s band but, to his surprise, his friend Dwike Mitchell at the piano. After contacting his old friend, Willie was invited to join the Hampton band and so he never went to Israel. In 1955, the two friends left Hampton to form the Mitchell-Ruff Duo, with Willie on horn and bass.

The Duo recorded, performed, and lectured on jazz extensively in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. It had the advantage, Willie related, of being the least expensive group in jazz, and it was therefore booked as the second act with the best and most expensive bands of the day – Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie – in Birdland, the Embers, the Village Vanguard, Basin Street East and other leading nightclubs. They were all riding the crest of one of the most popular eras of jazz – an era that would soon end with the advent of rock and the dominance of television.

In the late 1950s they toured widely for a group called Young Audiences, playing and demonstrating jazz for students in elementary schools and high schools, and since the mid-1960s their main format the college concert. They gave 60 or 70 concerts a year on college campuses. It was the Mitchell-Ruff Duo that introduced jazz to the Soviet Union, in 1959, playing and teaching at conservatories in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Yalta, Sochi, and Riga; and it was the Mitchell-Ruff Duo that took jazz to China, in 1981, playing and teaching at conservatories in Shanghai and Peking (now Beijing). Before the first trip, Willie taught himself Russian, his seventh language, and before the second trip he learned Mandarin Chinese, thereby enabling himself to explain to his listeners, in their own language, the roots and lineage of American jazz, with Dwike demonstrating on the piano.

Willie joined the faculty at Yale in 1971, and taught Music History, courses on Ethnomusicology, an interdisciplinary Seminar on Rhythm, and a course on Instrumental Arranging. He was founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, a community-based organization sponsoring world-class artists mentoring and performing with Yale students and young musicians from the New Haven Public School System. The program brought the giants of black American music to New Haven throughout the year to teach at Yale and in the city’s predominantly black public schools: singers like Odetta and Bessie Jones, arrangers like Benny Carter, tap dancers like Honi Coles, and instrumentalists like Charlie Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie.

Willie’s 1992 memoir, A Call to Assembly, was awarded the Deems Taylor ASCAP award. He also wrote widely on Paul Hindemith, one of his teachers at Yale, and on his professional association with the American composers Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn wrote a suite for horn and piano for Willie and Dwike. His collaborations with Yale geologist John Rodgers on the musical astronomy of the 17th-century scientist, Johannes Kepler, resulted in an important "planetarium for the ear" recording and published widely in international astronomy journals. Willie also wrote on music and dance in Russia, and on the introduction of American Jazz in China. Film was also an important teaching tool to him, and he visited the pygmies of the Central African Republic, the master drummers of Bali, the tribesmen of Senegal, and various other remote societies to make films about their drum music and language.

Willie was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 2001. In 2005 he and Dwike performed a rousing concert at the Northeast Horn Workshop in Purchase, New York with Ruff's former teacher, Abe Kniaz, in the audience. Willie said, "How many people perform a concert at age 73 and have their teacher in the audience?" Willie remembered being told that music doesn't mean a thing unless it tells a story, and that's the way he played it.

Willie’s teaching was based on storytelling through melodies. He was committed to nurturing talent and celebrating musical diversity. Beyond the accolades and achievements, Willie was a friend to many. His warmth, humility, and support touched the lives of those he encountered. His passing leaves a void in the musical realm.

Lisa Ford has been Principal Horn of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra since 1993. Previously Assistant Principal horn of the San Diego Symphony, Lisa is an active chamber musician and soloist, and is a member of the new music ensemble Gageego!.

Lisa is Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg where she also coaches brass and chamber music ensembles and is engaged in mental training and student health subjects. She graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and the Norwegian State Academy of Music and was also a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Her main teachers have been Frøydis Ree Wekre, Dale Clevenger, Norman Schweikert, and Julie Landsman.  

Lisa has a diploma in Catalytic Coaching from the ICC accredited Gothia Academy, Gothenburg, Sweden. “In my teaching, I emphasize artistic and personal integrity as well as helping each individual to become their own best teacher,” says Lisa. “I work with the mindset and awareness program Friendly Eyes, and approach my work with professionalism, cooperation, and joy.”

Lisa was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 2023.

Through a long and distinguished career as one of the world's leading horn players, as a professor and celebrated cultural personality, Frøydis's work has been of tremendous value to the art of horn playing and its repertoire of contemporary music. Her distinctive tone and communicative abilities have captured audiences and composers all over the world, and numerous works have been written especially for her.

Frøydis Ree Wekre was born in 1941 in Oslo into a musical family. She studied piano and violin (playing in the Norwegian Broadcasting Junior Orchestra) before taking up horn at the age of 17, having become fascinated by the sound of the horn and the idea of having her own voice in the orchestra.

Her horn studies continued in Sweden, Russia, and the US. Her principal teachers were Wilhelm Lanzky-Otto and Vitali Bujanovsky. Frøydis first won a position with the Norwegian Opera Orchestra, then in 1961 she joined the Oslo Philharmonic and became co-principal in 1965. In 1991, she retired from the orchestra to be professor of horn and wind chamber music at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she already held a part-time position.

Her role as a teacher has been important to Frøydis, and dozens of her students play in major orchestras around the world. She has been offered professorships in several countries. She received the Lindeman Prize in 1986 for her contributions as a teacher. With Nordic colleagues, she started the NORDHORNPED teaching group, whose activities include studying their own teaching on video. With Academy colleagues, she has been forging connections with music conservatories in the US.

Renowned as both teacher and performer, Frøydis has given masterclasses and workshops throughout Europe and North America. Her book On Playing the Horn Well has been translated into several languages, and she has contributed articles to various publications, including The Horn Call. Her latest book is Collected Writings. Sometimes she demonstrates playing a scale with the main tuning slides pushed all the way in, then pulled all the way out; the scale is in tune at A=440 in both instances, showing that you can play in tune no matter the horn. She advocates practicing lip and mouthpiece buzzing while waiting for a bus, even if it might be considered a bit eccentric; "If people don't know you, it doesn't matter what they think of you, and if they do know you, well, then it's not a surprise."

Her CDs showcase her talents and include many works that have been dedicated to her or that she has commissioned, notably works by Andrea Clearfield and Norwegian composers such as Trygve Madsen and Wolfgang Plagge.

Frøydis is named after an Icelandic saga character; in the midst of war, her mother wanted to give her the name of a strong person. Her name is now instantly recognized in the horn world, and she prefers to be addressed by her given name.

In 1973, Frøydis sponsored IHS memberships for Peter Damm and Vitaly Bujanovsky, both of whom lived behind the Iron Curtain and were unable to send membership dues to the US. In 1976 the effort became formalized into the WestEast (WE) project (renamed the Friendship Project in 2000) to support members in countries where the economy or currency restrictions make regular memberships impossible.

Frøydis served on the IHS Advisory Council from 1974-1978 and 1993-2000 and as IHS President from 1998-2000, and she was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 1994 and given the Punto Award in 2022. She was co-host of the International Horn Symposium in Banff in 1998 and has participated in symposiums from the earliest days as performer, lecturer, and master, often humorous and always inspiring. She is famous for her whistling prowess, a highlight at otherwise business-like IHS General Meetings.

Kerry Turner has become one of the most recognized names, not only in the horn world but also in brass playing in general. Whether as a composer or a performing artist on the horn, he appears regularly on the great concert stages of the world. Major ensembles with whom Kerry performs include the American Horn Quartet, the Virtuoso Horn Duo, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. As a member of these prestigious organizations, he has concertized on four continents. He is also a frequently invited soloist and clinician, having performed and taught in Germany, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Japan, the United States, and the Czech Republic.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Kerry received his Artist Diploma from the Manhattan School of Music in New York and, as a Fulbright Scholar, continued his studies with Hermann Baumann at the Stuttgart College of Music and Performing Arts. Following his studies, he placed fifth at the Geneva International Horn Competition and won the Bronze Medal at the 39th Prague Spring International Music Competition.

Turner’s compositional career has sky-rocketed over the past several years. His works for horn in combination with virtually every genre of chamber music continue to be heard literally around the world. He has been commissioned by many organizations, including the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Japanese Horn Ensemble, and the Richmond, Virginia Chamber Music Society (with Thomas Jöstlein), to name a few. He has been awarded top prizes at the IHS Composition Contest as well as the IBLA Foundation. In his spare time, Kerry sings tenor, studies languages (he is fluent in four and dabbles in a few others), and loves to cook.

Kerry is a Dürk Horns Artist and performs on the new Ab Aeternum model. He was elected an Honorary Member in 2022.