Ellen Dinwiddie Smith 

Ellen Dinwiddie Smith, who became the Minnesota Orchestra's first-ever female brass player upon joining the ensemble in 1991—retired in August 2025 after a trailblazing career during which she held both low and high horn chairs, a rare feat among major orchestras. Smith also held positions with the Ft. Worth (Co-Principal) and Charleston, SC (Third) Symphonies and has played professionally for over 40 years. Smith recalls fondly her journeys with the Orchestra to stages around the world, from Europe, Cuba and South Africa to the West Coast and Carnegie Hall. “The South Africa tour was an incredible trip,” she says. “It reinforced how powerful music can be in connecting people.” She recalls at the Philharmonie in Berlin, “my sons and husband surprised me and showed up in the middle of the tour and sat behind me in the audience.” Among her enduring Orchestra Hall memories are the first concert after the lockout in 2014— where “it was overwhelming to see the Finnish flags and the solidarity colors”—and playing Eleanor Alberga’s Shining Gate of Morpheus in one of the first concerts during the pandemic. “One of the best things to come out of the pandemic is our partnership with Ashleigh Rowe and the team at TPT to broadcast our live concerts on YouTube,” she says. One standout project for Smith was recording Mahler’s Seventh Symphony under Osmo Vänskä, including the Nachtmusik movement that starts with a first and third horn call-and-response. “The joy of performing that movement with my longtime colleague Michael Gast will remain in my soul forever,” she says. Another favorite memory involved performing Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony while pregnant. As the Minnesota Chorale whispered the word “Auferstehen,” Smith’s unborn son Alex kicked for the very first time. “And not just a little,” she says. “He started drumming and doing somersaults. Music speaks to and moves us all, even before birth!” Over three and a half decades, Smith has seen the Orchestra evolve—and through it all, has remained grounded in gratitude for her colleagues and the rest of the Orchestra family. In retirement, she will continue to teach horn at the University of Minnesota and privately, volunteer, spend time with her husband, conductor Mark Russell Smith, and engage in her longtime hobby of scuba diving and underwater photography.

Career details:

Smith previously served as Young Artist Program faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music Summerfest. She was the founding Artistic Director of the Colonial Chamber Series (2006-2017) and organized the Musicians for Tsunami Relief benefit concert (2005) and Community Emergency Service Benefit Concert (2012), both held at Colonial Church in Edina. (known currently as Meetinghouse Church)

In 2014, she was a featured artist at the Mid-South Horn Workshop in Austin, Texas, and also performed with her colleagues at the Mid-North Horn Workshop at the University of St. Thomas. She was a featured artist at the 2003 International Horn Society Workshop at Indiana University. Smith has served as an artist-teacher on the faculty of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival and spent many summers on the faculty of the Kendall Betts Horn Camp in Littleton, New Hampshire. She has performed and toured with the Cleveland Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and as a guest with the Kennedy Center Orchestra and the Quad City Symphony Orchestra.

As a soloist, she has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, Kenwood Symphony Orchestra, Linden Hills Chamber Orchestra, and Mississippi Valley Symphony Orchestra. Smith has performed with the Lakes Chamber Music Society in Alexandria, Minnesota, and the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival and collaborated with the Dale Warland Singers in performance and on their CD Britten, Bernstein, et al., as a soloist in Aharon Harlap’s Bat Yiftach (Jephthah’s Daughter). She serves on the board of the Twin Cities Horn Club, is a brass sectional leader for the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, and is a lifetime member of the International Horn Society.

Smith is a 1987 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Myron Bloom and was a member of the Curtis Wind Quintet, a top prize winner in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Prior to studies at Curtis, Smith attended the Juilliard School and the University of Texas at Austin. Her teachers include Myron Bloom, Wayne Barrington, Greg Hustis, and Michael Hatfield. While still a student at Curtis, she was named third horn of the Charleston (South Carolina) Symphony Orchestra and later joined the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as co-principal horn. She has performed at the Spoleto USA, Waterloo, Chautauqua, Colorado Philharmonic, National Repertory Orchestra, and Aspen summer music festivals.