Remixing biographies: Sarah Willis
This is a rewrite of the biography of Sarah Willis, based on material available on her website. An attempt at improving the basics — using the active voice, removing clichés, putting the emphasis on the right places, fixing punctuation and spelling, and generally shortening things — it is also a personal exercise in applying “The Elements of Style”.
Sarah Willis — musician, communicator, and educator — is bringing classical music into the age of social media. Born in the USA and holding dual US and UK citizenship, her father’s work as a journalist took her a a young girl to Japan and Russia; an experience that made her from an early age comfortable with cultural diversity. During this period, and despite moving around so much, her parent’s support and insistence encouraged her to practice the piano. Finally settling in the UK in her early teens, the Royal College of Music is where she began her official studies through the practice of the horn.
In her teenage years, her peers failed to understand Sarah’s focus on practicing music; school became a lonely place for the budding musician. Solace was found in the camaraderie experienced each Sunday evenings playing in a youth orchestra — underscoring the need of all artists for a supportive environment; a lesson Sarah later heeded when she decided to use part of the proceeds of an album towards buying new instruments for a local youth orchestra.
In 1991, Sarah joined the Berlin State Opera — then under the direction of Daniel Barenboim — as second horn. The Berlin Wall fallen; It was an exciting time to live in the city. For the rest of the decade, Sarah supplemented her Berlin base with globetrotting: playing as a guest to orchestras and chamber music ensembles, and performing as a soloist. In 2001, she competed for, and obtained, her dream position: membership in the brass section of the Berlin Philharmonic — a first for a woman.
A salsa dancer and lover of popular latin music, Sarah visited Cuba in 2017. The enthusiasm and talent of the local musicians she befriended compelled her to come back in 2020 to produce an album: “Mozart y Mambo”. Combining solo pieces for the French horn by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with traditional Cuban music, the project — made in collaboration with, and in support of, the Havana Lyceum Orchestra — reunited Sarah with the joys of her teenage years: the youth orchestra.
Hosting a series of online interviews known as the “Horn Hangouts”, hosting “Sarah´s Music” on Deutsche Welle TV, moderating the DG International Podcast series for Deutsche Grammophon, interviewing conductors and soloists for the Digital Concert Hall, creating and presenting the series of Family Concerts for the Berlin Philharmonic, presenting live to 33 million viewers during the Final Concert of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and making the award-winning documentary films “Mozart y Mambo” and “A World without Beethoven?” — these are some of the reasons why her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded Sarah with an MBE in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List for services to charity and the promotion of classical music.
