TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
RAMSEY CONCERT HALL
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
Ramsey Concert Hall
UGA Performing Arts Center
Calls for Two Horns
with Damon Denton, piano
PROGRAM
Verne Reynolds (1926-2011)
Meditation Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Four Elements
II. Wind
Lament
Concerto for Horn
I. Prelude. Rhapsody
Selections from The Great American Songbook
Ann Callaway (b. 1949)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939)
I’m Old Fashioned Jerome Kern (1885-1945)
Love Walked In George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Luck Be a Lady Frank Loesser (1910-1969)
Softly as I Leave You Antonio De Vita (1932-1998)
Song of a New World
Jean Martin-Williams is Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music. She teaches horn, directs the University of Georgia Horn Choir, coaches chamber music, and is a member of the Georgia Woodwind Quintet. MartinWilliams served for eleven years as the Director of UGA’s Lilly Teaching Fellows program, under the auspices of the Center for Teaching and Learning. She has a passion for teaching and improving pedagogy and served on the University committee that established the First Year Odyssey Seminar program. Since 2016 she has also served as an Associate Dean for the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences as an advocate for the arts and undergraduate instruction. In 2022 she received the University Professor award from UGA.
Before joining the University of Georgia faculty, she was a full-time performer in New York City, performing in a variety of chamber and orchestral settings including the Metropolitan Opera, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the New York Chamber Symphony. She continues to be an active performer and is a member of the New York Pops Orchestra. During the summer, she has served on the artist faculty of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina and the Chamber Music Center of the Northeast at Bennington College in Vermont. Martin-Williams has published in The Horn Call and she is currently a member of the Executive Advisory Committee of the International Horn Competition of America.
As a soloist, chamber musician, and lecturer, Martin-Williams has appeared at the Georgia Music Educators conference, the Southeast Horn Workshop, the International Horn Society conference, the International Trumpet Conference, the International Double Reed Society, Music Educators National Conference, International Society of Music Educators, the Music Teachers National Association, and the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors conference. In 2001, 2007, 2019 and 2024 she hosted the Southeast Horn Workshop. She also hosted the International Horn Society symposium in 1999 and the Paxman Young Horn Player of the Year competition in 2001.
Martin-Williams has performed in many states and countries, including Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Russia. She has recorded with the New York Chamber Symphony, the New York Pops, the Georgia Woodwind Quintet and the Atlanta Symphony, including the Grammy-award winning Berlioz Requiem. A native of Decatur, Georgia, Martin-Williams attended the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and the Manhattan School of Music, from which she was the first brass player to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. She lives in Athens with her husband Moffatt Williams, their children Katie Sue and Grier, and their two endearing dogs, Zoey and Buddy.
As a dedicated teacher, active performer, and prolific composer, James Naigus seeks to inspire the next generation of musicians and creative thinkers through artistic empowerment and enthusiastic innovation. He is Assistant Professor of Horn at the University of Georgia and hornist with the Georgia Brass Quintet. He is co-founder of the Cor Moto Horn Duo with Drew Phillips, and co-editor/contributor of the Creative Hornist and Technique Tips columns in the Horn Call, the journal of the International Horn Society. In 2024 he was awarded the prestigious Michael F. Adams Early Career Scholar Award from UGA.
He frequently plays with the Atlanta Symphony and Charleston Symphony, and has played with the Wichita Symphony, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, Brevard Symphony, Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, Valdosta Symphony, and Ocala Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 he was selected to perform with the WCIT World Orchestra in Yerevan, Armenia. He has toured Europe in 2017 & 2014 and South America in 2011 as a member of the American Chamber Winds. He also frequently performs on recitals at the Midnorth, Midwest, Midsouth and Southeast Horn Workshops, and International Horn Symposiums, and in 2024 hosted the Southeast Horn Workshop in Athens, GA.
Naigus has been a member of the faculty and staff at the prestigious Kendall Betts Horn Camp for the last several years, as well as the Heartland Horn Camp. Additional teaching interests include music theory, concert and commercial composition, film music, and technology.
With a catalogue of over 100 published works, Naigus’ compositions have been performed throughout the United States and beyond, with enthusiastic reception and rave review. Venues of note include the New York Philharmonic, the West Point Band, Music Academy of the West, and the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute. He is also an award winning film composer, and has written commercial compositions for clients such as Google.
He is a graduate of the University of Iowa (DMA) studying with Jeffrey Agrell, studied horn and composition with Paul Basler at the University of Florida during his masters degree, and while attending the University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree studied with Soren Hermansson, Bryan Kennedy, and Adam Unsworth. Prior appointments include the University of Central Missouri and the University of Iowa.
Damon Denton was born in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up in Severna Park, Maryland. He is a graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School where he received a Master of Music degree studying under Russian pianist, Oxana Yablonskaya. He has been a faculty accompanist at the University of Georgia since 2010.
During his career Damon has performed concerts in England, Ireland, Mexico, Germany, South Africa and throughout the United States. Venue highlights have included: Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall; Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; The University of South Africa; The State Theater of Pretoria; The Royal Dublin Society in Ireland; The Lyric Theater in Baltimore Maryland; The Leighton House Museum in London; The Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara; The United Nations; Le Theatre de Queretaro in Mexico, among others. Denton has performed as collaborator with Fred Mills (UGA professor and former member of the Canadian Brass), with members of the New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras as well as with soloists from the St. Lukes Orchestra, New York’s “Winds of New Amsterdam”, and the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. Damon was also a close friend and studio pianist in New York City for the late Metropolitan opera star, Anna Moffo.
Early career honors have included prizes at the Annapolis and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Young Soloist Competitions, the Peabody “Concours”, the Kosciuszko Foundation’s Chopin Competition in NYC, the Music Academy of the West (“A brilliant performance…” Santa Barbara
Press) and Aspen Music Festival’s Concerto Competitions, the First National Young Keyboard Artist’s Competition in Grand Rapids Michigan; the Fourth International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa. In South Africa, Denton’s performance of Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 was nationally broadcast by the SABC from Pretoria’s State Theater: “He has a huge range of tone and articulation……. an exquisite performance by the American pianist....” (The Pretoria News). Orchestral performances within Georgia have included opening the UGA Thursday Scholarship Series with the Gershwin Concerto in F as well being a featured artist on the Macon Symphony Orchestra’s Masterworks Series performing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2.
On the modern musical front, Damon was the synth keyboard player for the popular indie alternative band the Pylon Reenactment Society. The group was invited to perform at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, Spain and are featured performing live in the documentary film “Red turns into Blue: Athens Inside-Out 2”
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