
ABOUT
A native of St. Paul, Aisling O’Sullivan graduated with her Master's degree in Horn Performance in May 2020 from the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Professor Ellen Dinwiddie Smith of the Minnesota Orchestra. She earned her B.M. in Horn Performance at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), studying with Professor Randy Gardner. While at the University of Minnesota, Aisling was featured as a soloist in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings. At CCM, she came Second Place in the inaugural Andrew Howell Memorial Horn Scholarship Competition.
As a young horn player, Aisling was a member of both MYS (Minnesota Youth Symphonies) and GTCYS (Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies), the two youth symphonies in the Twin Cities area. She credits these organizations for inspiring her love for classical music, and these early experiences as well as her high school horn teacher, Ellen Dinwiddie Smith, are the reasons she chose to pursue horn professionally.
Aisling has attended many summer music festivals, including the Texas Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institute, Sewanee, the Bay View Spectrum Brass Seminar, and Kendall Betts Horn Camp. This upcoming summer of 2021, she will be a fellow with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Aisling’s goal is to play in a professional orchestra, and most recently she was a semi-finalist in the horn audition for The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in November 2020.
In addition to playing horn, Aisling enjoys learning and tutoring Mandarin Chinese, rowing, and raising Monarch butterflies in the summer (Monarch instagram page: @monarch__mama).