鈥淚t felt really special to be performing again,鈥� says Valerie Sly, DMA candidate in horn performance and pedagogy, reflecting on her five-week summer gig with the Des Moines Metro Opera. 鈥淭hey were one of the first opera companies to go back to a real live season.
鈥淓veryone was just really, really grateful to be able to get back on stage鈥攐r, in our case, 鈥榠n the pit.鈥欌��
Not only did Sly win Third Horn position with the Des Moines Metro Opera, she also recently nailed the runner-up spot for the Fort Worth Symphony鈥檚 Principal Horn position, earned a finalist spot for the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C. and was invited鈥攂y audition鈥攖o return to the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland as part of its alumni program.
鈥淭hey do some really experimental stuff sometimes and I love it,鈥� says Sly, reflecting on the contemporary focus of the Lucerne Festival Academy where she鈥檒l spend a week this fall. 鈥淭hey play mostly new music written within the last 50 years.鈥澨�
Of the four-round competition in Fort Worth, Texas, she adds: 鈥淭his was the first live audition that happened for me since the beginning of COVID.听
鈥淚 think we're going to start to see auditions open up again and I feel like I鈥檓 in a good place to be taking more auditions this year.鈥�
Beyond her active and rewarding spring semester and summer, Sly shared that she鈥檚 always wanted to study with Professor of Horn Michael Thornton, which led her to CU Boulder. 鈥淭here are many positives to gigging constantly, but having this time at CU not worrying about work has been a great privilege,鈥� says Sly, who earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree from Oberlin College and Conservatory in 2013 and a master鈥檚 degree in horn performance from Yale University in 2017.听听
鈥淚鈥檝e been able to go back to the basics and gain the opportunity to reconnect with this instrument鈥nd the reason why I do what I do.鈥�
