Background
BMusEd, Central Michigan University
Bass Trombonist Randall Hawes joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1985 and retired in 2020. Immediately following his tenure with the DSO, Hawes was guest bass trombonist with the Cleveland Orchestra for four years. Prior to joining the DSO he was with the Woody Herman Thundering Herd for two years and then a fellow at Tanglewood Music Center. In 1995 Hawes was invited by Sir Georg Solti to join the World Orchestra for Peace, with which he has participated in tours and recordings with Solti’s successor, Valery Gergiev. He has been a member of the Saito-Kinen Orchestra at the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival since 2011. He’s also performed with Chicago Chamber Musicians, Music of the Baroque, Summit Brass and many of the world’s major orchestras including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. His distinguished teaching career includes faculty appointments at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, as well as master class and guest artist appearances in Japan, Europe and throughout the United States.
Hawes has performed and recorded more than 30 albums with the DSO under music directors Gunther Herbig, Neeme Järvi and Leonard Slatkin, and is featured on four albums for bass trombone and piano with pianist collaborator Kathryn Goodson; he also appears on the recent recordings of the National Brass Ensemble: The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli and Deified. He received a bachelor’s degree in music education from Central Michigan University, where he studied with renowned trombone pedagogue, William Rivard and at Carnegie Mellon University with Byron B. McColloh, who was bass trombonist with the Pittsburgh Symphony