Lauren Anker

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

Lauren’s past festival experience includes four summers at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where she received a John N. Stern Scholarship for students of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for 2018 and 2019. She has also attended 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 performed a variety of orchestral and contemporary works in venues such as Chicago’s Symphony Center, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She was a founding member of Kodan Quintet at the Shepherd School and was named a 2021 Performance Today Young Artist in Residence.

She first studied horn with Washington, D. C.–area freelancer Jeremy Cucco. Other past 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 enjoys biking across Ottawa and the surrounding area’s fabulous bike path system and hopes to get a bit better at skating on the canal!