Artists

Vanessa Fralick, trombone

Canadian trombonist Vanessa Fralick completed one year of her master's degree at the Juilliard School before leaving to perform with the San Antonio Symphony in 2009-10. For the 2012-13 season she continues with the St. Louis Symphony as Acting Associate Principal Trombone. Fralick is supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, which has allowed her to continue her studies with the New York Philharmonic’s Principal Trombone, Joseph Alessi, and also take lessons with Boston Symphony trombonists Toby Oft and Norman Bolter. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto under the instruction of Jeff Hall and Gordon Wolfe of the Toronto Symphony, and studied for one year with James Box at McGill University, where she performed as a sub with the Montreal Symphony. She has also recently played with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pops. This past summer she was selected to be a member of the prestigious Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, and she performed as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. 

Fralick is making her name as a soloist as well. In June, 2010, she won the Grand Prize in the Susan Slaughter International Solo Brass Competition and performed as a guest artist at the International Women's Brass Conference. In 2009 she won concerto competitions both at Juilliard and at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, winning the chance to perform the Grondahl Trombone Concerto in concert with both orchestras. Vanessa Fralick was the Third Prize winner in the 2008 Montreal Symphony Solo Competition. She is an alumna of the National Youth Orchestra and National Academy Orchestra of Canada, and also occasionally plays alongside her brass-playing parents in the Niagara Symphony Orchestra in her hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario.

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