Biography
Kristen S. Hansen is Associate Professor of Music in the Schwob School of Music at
Columbus State University (Georgia). She holds the DMA and the MM in Horn Performance
and Literature from the Eastman School Music in Rochester, New York, and she previously
received the degree Bachelor of Music summa cum laude from St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minnesota. Her teachers in horn have included Peter Kurau, Kendall Betts, and Verne
Reynolds. After completing Master's coursework in Rochester, Dr. Hansen was the director
of high school and middle school bands in the Fonda-Fultonville district in central
New York. Concurrently, she played as assistant and then principal horn with the Schenectady
Symphony Orchestra. She has taught and performed at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp, and
has appeared as a Regional Artist and a lecturer at annual conventions of the International
Horn Society and the Southeast Horn Workshop. She was a founding member of the Barry
Tuckwell Institute and for ten years held the position of second horn with the Columbus
Symphony Orchestra. With the CSU Horn Studio, she has hosted the Southeast Horn Workshop
twice, as well as the International Horn Competition of America. She has served several
times as a faculty member or site director for study abroad programs in Oxford and
Paris, and in August 2010 performed with the Vianden Festival in Luxembourg. Dr. Hansen
also performs regular recitals, including the popular “Music and Tea” series. She
has authored an undergraduate theory text and teaches theory, humanities and counterpoint.
Recently, she directed an innovative re-creation of a Renaissance masque in a collaboration
among CSU faculty, students, and community members. Dr. Hansen directs the Baroque
Consortium, another collaboration of area artists including Schwob faculty and students,
in which she also plays continuo.