“Actually you never eyeball a horn player. That’s one of the real rules. You just don’t. They’re stuntmen. You don’t eyeball stuntmen just before they’re about to go near death.”
Dr. Caiti Beth McKinney has built a thriving, multi-faceted career as a chamber and orchestral horn player, educator, researcher, and activist for inclusive musical spaces and educational practices. Her advocacy for equal representation in programming and performance informs both her educational philosophy and musical outlook.
As an Educator:
Caiti Beth has been the adjunct Professor of Horn at Florida International University since 2022, where her students have achieved high levels of success, including winning the FIU Concerto Competition. She maintains an active private lesson studio, and her students have earned scholarships and admissions into institutions such as the Interlochen Arts Academy, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and the University of Miami Frost School of Music.
As a Performer:
As an orchestral horn player, Caiti Beth currently serves as Fourth Horn with the Palm Beach Symphony and the Florida Grand Opera and as Principal Horn of the Miami International Piano Festival. She also appeared with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, Boca Arts Festival Orchestra, South Florida Symphony, Miami Lyric Opera, Gulf Shore Opera, and other performing ensembles.
Caiti Beth is in demand as a commercial horn player; for example, she records for exciting projects like rapper Bad Bunny’s 2023 Coachella entrance music. She also performed live with legendary rock band The Who during their The Who Hits Back tour in 2022 across multiple venues in Florida. Caiti Beth’s further appearances with major soloists include artists such as Andrea Bocelli, the Four Phantoms, Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, and Renee Fleming.
An advocate for the importance and value of chamber music for winds and brass, Caiti Beth is a founding member of the Miami-based all-women KHAOS Wind Quintet. Since their inception in 2019, KHAOS appeared as featured artists in varied events including the 2022 Flagler Museum Music Series, the Young Women Conductor’s Symposium, the Puerto Rico Flute Symposium, and the National Association of Collegiate Winds and Percussion Instructors Conference. In 2021, KHAOS were the Artists-in-Residence with the University of Miami Society of Composers, Inc. Caiti Beth also frequently performs with the Palm Beach Symphony Brass Quintet, the South Florida Symphony Brass Quintet, and other brassy ensembles!
As a Researcher:
Caiti Beth combines her research skills and passion for advocacy in all aspects of her professional life. In pursuit of gender and racial equity in musical programming practices, she founded REPresent, an open-access database of works for horn written by composers from underrepresented backgrounds, highlighting the intersections of repertoire and representation. REPresent has continued to expand since its inception in 2020, now encompassing a podcast of interviews with composers from the database, a social media project entitled “366 Days of Works,” and consulting services for those looking for assistance with researching and programming diverse repertoire.
As part of her efforts to spread awareness about representational issues in music, Caiti Beth frequently presents at conferences and festivals. She lectured on her dissertation, “‘In the Forest I Wound My Horn:’ Studies in the Gender Semiotics of Horn in Classical and Romantic Orchestral Literature” at International Horn Symposium 54 in 2022 and the Mid-South Horn Workshop in 2023, where she appeared on two panels discussing entrepreneurship and diversity in music. She will soon present two lectures at the SHE: Women in Music Festival at the University of Arkansas in March 2024. Stay tuned!
Caiti Beth further serves as the Research Coordinator for the Boulanger Initiative, a non-profit that advocates for women and all gender-marginalized composers. In this capacity, she helped spearhead the launch of BI’s Beyond the Box, Into the Barlines curriculum guides and activity supplements series, acting as the project manager and lead author for the Baroque-Era Women Composers edition, now available for purchase here.
Other publications include Caiti Beth’s undergraduate thesis, “Extended Techniques on Horn and Their Use in Contemporary Film,” as well as an online blog where she details the history of the women who broke the glass ceiling of professional horn-playing, entitled “Horn Becomes Her.” She also writes a recurring column for the International Horn Society’s Horn and More electronic newsletter where she features underrepresented composers and their music.
Caiti Beth holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Horn Performance from the University of Miami, a Master of Music in Horn Performance from Indiana University, and both a Bachelor of Music in Horn Performance and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Texas Christian University. Her former instructors include Richard Todd, Dale Clevenger, Heather Test, and Alton Adkins.
In her free time, Caiti Beth enjoys lounging with her “Wobbly-Cat” Oliver and his adopted sister Luna, birdwatching, and trying out new bread recipes!