Lisa Bontrager

How Long with BBBC:  26 years

Home City: State College, PA

Countries Performed In: England, Wales, Japan, Paraguay, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, US

Principal Instrument: French Horn

Other Instruments: British Tenor Horn

Where you might have heard me perform: With Millennium Brass or the Pennsylvania Quintet

What is special to me about the BBBC: Incredible music making in a variety of styles and lifelong friendships with such wonderful musicians

What is special to me about Battle Creek: The warm people of Battle Creek and the great smells when Cocoa Puffs are baking!

Full Biography

Lisa O. Bontrager has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Japan, including tours with the versatile Millennium Brass and MirrorImage, a horn duo with Michelle Stebleton, as well as the Pennsylvania Quintet. Bontrager has served as featured artist at the Southeast Horn Workshop, the International Women’s Brass Conference in Toronto, the Western United States Horn Symposium (Las Vegas, Nevada), the Western Illinois Horn Workshop, Oficinate Musica De Curitiba (Brazil), and has been a concerto soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Paraguay.

Recognized for her teaching, Bontrager has presented masterclasses throughout the world. She is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Penn State where she received the 2008 Faculty Scholar Medal for the Arts and Humanities. For six summers, she taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp. She serves as principal horn of the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra, the Altoona Symphony, Music at Penn’s Woods, as tenor hornist of the Brass Band of Battle Creek, and has performed with the Baltimore, Chautauqua, and Harrisburg symphonies.

Bontrager serves as an elected member of the Advisory Council of the International Horn Society. She can be heard on nearly 20 recordings, including her solo CD, “Hunter’s Moon,” released on the Summit label. She holds performance degrees from the University of Michigan where she studied with Louis Stout.