Heather Wootton

French Horn Instructor

Heather was a member of the horn section of the Calgary Philharmonic 1993-2025, retiring at the end of the 2024-25 season.

Before coming to Calgary, she was a member the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Stratford Festival Orchestra, and maintained an active and varied free-lance career about southern Ontario.

Born in Provost, Alberta and raised largely in Ottawa, Ontario, Heather received a Bachelor of Musical Arts and an Artists’ Diploma in Performance from the University of Western Ontario and continued her studies with the Orchestral Training Program of the Royal Conservatory and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Her main teachers at that time included Robert Creech and Eugene Rittich.

Further studies included summers at the Keystone Brass Institute in Colorado, the Kent/Blossom Festival in Ohio and the Festival Orchestra of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.  Heather enjoyed studying with such artists as Richard Solis, Gail Williams, Bill Klingelhoffer and Phillip Farkas.

 From 2001 - 2008, Heather was guest soloist and horn instructor at “Summer Music on the Shannon”, a music festival then based in Limerick, Ireland.

.Heather is an avid chamber musician and was a founding member of the chamber ensembles, Rosa Selvatica, and Altius Brass. She loves to teach, is a sought-after clinician and coach and finds great joy in helping students of all ages discover music and the horn.

 In January of 2016, she helped launch the Calgary Philharmonic’s Sistema-inspired “PhilKids” after school music program. In the role of Lead Teaching Artist, she led a dedicated and passionate team helping children, who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity, learn to play an instrument and explore all the benefits that music can add to our lives.