Ann Hobson Pilot retired from the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2009 Tanglewood season, following forty years of service to the orchestra. Ms. Hobson Pilot became principal harp of the BSO in 1980, having joined the orchestra in 1969 as assistant principal harp and principal harp with the Boston Pops. Prior to her time with the BSO, she was substitute second harp with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and principal harp of the National Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, she has also had an extensive solo career, performing with many American orchestras as well as with orchestras in Europe, Haiti, New Zealand, and South Africa. She has several recordings available on the Boston Records label, as well as on the Koch International and Denouement labels. Ms. Hobson Pilot holds a Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bridgewater State College. In 1998 and 1999 she was featured in a video documentary sponsored by the Museum of Afro-American History andWGBH, aired nationwide on PBS, about her personal musical journey as well as her African journey to find the roots of the harp. She is currently working with the producer of “Musical Journey,” Susan Dangel, to create a new half-hour documentary which will tell the story of her life in music (www.musicaljourney.org). In September 1999 Ms. Hobson Pilot traveled to London to record, with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Harp Concerto by the young American composer Kevin Kaska, a work she commissioned. Ms. Hobson Pilot has been a faculty member at the New England Conservatory, Boston University, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She is a member of the contemporary music ensemble Collage and has also performed with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the Ritz Chamber Players, and the Marlboro, Newport, and Sarasota music festivals, among others. Following this evening’s world premiere performance of John Williams’s OnWillows and Birches, she will play the work again on October 1 at New York’s Carnegie Hall when James Levine and the BSO repeat tonight’s program to open that venue’s 2009-10 season. She will also perform the work again on Saturday night, October 3, here at Symphony Hall, in a BSO subscription concert that also features her in music of Carter and Debussy.
![[Ann Hobson Pilot]](/images/musicians/annhobsonpilot95.jpg)
