Lauren Anker

From Fredericksburg, Virginia, Lauren Anker was recently appointed to the position of third horn with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. She holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory in Horn performance and history, where she studied under former St. Louis Symphony principal horn Roland Pandolfi. In 2021, she completed a master’s degree at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music studying with William VerMeulen.

Anker has spent previous summers at the Aspen Music Festival, the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, the National Orchestral Institute, the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, and the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. She has joined the horn sections of the Houston Symphony and Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and has performed a variety of orchestral and contemporary works in venues such as Chicago’s Symphony Center, Carnegie Hall, Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Art Museum. At the Shepherd School, she was a founding member of Kodan Quintet and was named a 2021 Young Artist in Residence with American Public Media’s Performance Today radio program.

She first began studying horn with Washington D. C. area freelancer Jeremy Cucco. Other notable teachers include James Nickel of the National Symphony Orchestra, former principal horn of Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal John Zirbel, and Andrew Bain of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is looking forward to hiking and biking as much as possible in and around Sun Valley!