french horn
Lecturer in French Horn. A native of Western Pennylvania, Mr Purvis pursues a multifaceted career both in the U.S. and abroad as horn soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and educator. A passionate advocate of new music, Mr. Purvis has participated in numerous premieres as hornist and conductor, including horn concerti by Peter Lieberson and Bayan Northcott, trios for violin, horn, and piano by Poul Ruders and Paul Lansky, and Steven Stuckey’s Sonate en Forme de Préludes with Emanuel Ax in Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Purvis is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Yale Brass Trio, the Triton Horn Trio and is an emeritus member of Orpheus. A frequent guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has also collaborated with the Tokyo, Juilliard, Orion, Brentano, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Fine Arts string quartets.
His extensive list of recordings spans an unusually broad range from original instrument performance to standard solo and chamber music repertoire to contemporary solo and chamber music works as well as numerous recordings of contemporary music as conductor. Recent recordings include the Horn Concerto of Peter Lieberson on Bridge (which received a Grammy and a WQXR Gramophone Award), works of Schumann, Paul Lansky, and the soon-to-be-released Quintet for Horn and Strings by Richard Wernick with the Juilliard Quartet.
Since 1999, Mr. Purvis has been a faculty member at the Yale School of Music, where he is coordinator of winds and brass. He is also on the faculties of the Juilliard School and SUNY Stony Brook. In 2008 he was appointed as Interim Director of the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.