Homecoming | Evening with Sarah Willis MBE

Gabriela Montero at Prager | Season 5, Concert 3

Homecoming | Evening with Sarah Willis
Sat, Nov 7 | Prager Family Center for the Arts
Doors open at 7:00 PM | Concert begins at 7:30 PM

Sarah Willis | French horn | UK-USA-Germany
Maryland-born member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Willis gives a musically illustrated account of her far-reaching musical journey. Sarah Willis was honoured by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2021 for services to music and charity.

Time & Place
Nov 07, 2026, 7:30 PM
Prager Family Center for the Arts, 17 S Washington St, Easton, MD 21601, USA

About the Artists
Sarah Willis

Sarah Willis MBE is an internationally renowned French horn player. She has been a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra since 2001 and is also an acclaimed TV and digital presenter. Traveling the world with her horn, she brings the best of classical music to a global audience.

Sarah Willis was born in Maryland, USA and holds British, American and German citizenship.

Her father’s work as a foreign correspondent took her family around the world and they lived in the USA, Tokyo and Moscow before moving to England when Sarah was 13. She began playing the horn aged 14 at school and then attended the Royal College of Music Junior Department. She went on to study full time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where her teachers included Anthony Halstead and Jeff Bryant.

Sarah later studied with Fergus McWilliam in Berlin, where she became 2nd Horn in the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim in 1991. During this time, Sarah played as a guest with many top orchestras performed worldwide as a soloist and in various chamber music ensembles.

In 2001, Sarah Willis joined the Berlin Philharmonic, becoming the first female member of the brass section. As well as her work with the orchestra and her masterclasses, which take her all over the world, she has recorded various acclaimed albums including the Brahms Horn Trio,  Horn Discoveries, the Rosetti Double Concertos as well as the much celebrated albums Opera! and Four Corners! with the Berlin Philharmonic Horns.Her three solo albums combining classical and Cuban music for the internationally acclaimed project `Mozart y Mambo´ were all recorded in Havana, the first album going straight to number 1 in the classical charts in January 2020 and also reached the pop and Latino charts. The accompanying video has been viewed over 10 million times online. Her “Sarahbanda” the “Cuban band with a difference”, has recorded two very successful albums and play to sold out audiences all over Europe and Asia.

Sarah is involved in many of the Berlin Philharmonic education projects and especially enjoys creating and presenting their Family Concerts. She interviews conductors and soloists for the Digital Concert Hall and in 2011, she presented live to 33 million viewers during the Final Concert of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

Sarah is passionate about music education and makes full use of digital technology and social media to reach audiences worldwide. She was chosen to be one of the first testers of Google Glass and used this experience to see how new technology could be used in classical music.

Sarah runs a popular series of online interviews known as the “Horn Hangouts”, is a regular broadcaster and interviewer on TV, radio and online and fronts the classical music programme Sarah´s Music for Deutsche Welle TV. She moderates the DG International Podcast series for Deutsche Grammophon and her latest award-winning documentary films, “Mozart y Mambo”,  “A World without Beethoven?” and “Cuban Dances” were broadcast worldwide on the Deutsche Welle and Arte TV channels.

Sarah’s contributions to classical music were recognised at the highest level in the UK when she was made an MBE – Member of the Order of the British Empire – by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List for services to charity and the promotion of classical music