Retiring Musician Spotlight: Marni J. Hougham
This summer the Minnesota Orchestra celebrates the career of English horn and oboe player Marni J. Hougham as she enters retirement after 29 years with the Orchestra. A Los Angeles native who studied with William Criss at the University of Southern California, she joined the Orchestra in 1997 after being a member of the San Antonio Symphony and playing with additional ensembles in the U.S. and abroad. Winning a position in the Twin Cities was a doubly good fortune since Hougham already had family in the area, including a brother-in-law, Burt Hara, just one row back in the Orchestra’s clarinet section.
Two major tours came early in Hougham’s tenure, which she calls simply “amazing”—travels to Japan and Europe in 1998—plus a stop at Carnegie Hall. “Part of the Carnegie performance was an aria from Verdi’s opera Attila with Kathleen Battle,” she recalls. “The lights onstage went out while only three musicians were playing—myself, Principal Harp Kathy Kienzle and Principal Flute Adam Kuenzel. Kathleen kept singing, and so Kathy, Adam and I kept playing, our eyes inches from the music. It was so scary—and then when we got to Kathleen’s cadenza, the lights went on! An unforgettable performance!”
Because the English horn—the larger, lower-toned relative of the oboe—is called for less often than most other standard woodwind instruments, its moments in the spotlight seem all the more moving and memorable. High on the list of the instrument’s times to shine are Dvořák’s New World Symphony, Sibelius’ The Swan of Tuonela and Copland’s Quiet City—all of which Hougham performed multiple times during her tenure, in addition to recording the Sibelius work with the Orchestra in 2002. She cites additional favorite works with major English horn parts including Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, Mahler’s symphonies, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, just to name a few. “There are so many moments—I can’t list them all!” she says.
English horn was also at the center of an offstage story in the wake of the Orchestra’s landmark Cuba tour in May 2015. While in Havana, Hougham and Orchestra oboists John Snow and Julie Gramolini Williams met Lauren Rios Hernández, an oboe teacher at Escuela Nacional de Arte, and learned that Rios’ students didn’t have access to an English horn. With the help of Orchestra supporter Paula DeCosse, Hougham, Snow and Williams organized a GoFundMe campaign to cover the cost of a new English horn, which Hougham helped select and was then delivered to Rios and her students.
In retirement, Hougham looks forward to spending more time with family. Both she and her husband Craig Hara, a multifaceted musician who has also appeared with the Orchestra, “are blessed with family here,” she notes. As she prepares to leave the stage at summer’s end, her thoughts turn to the people who have supported the Orchestra throughout her career. “I would like to thank all of our amazing patrons,” she says—a fitting farewell from a musician whose artistry on one of the Orchestra’s most deeply expressive instruments has reverberated in Orchestra Hall for nearly three decades.
