Amy Gilreath

Amy Gilreath has won the respect and praise of musicians and audiences the world over for her beautiful sound and expressive interpretations. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has been invited to perform in Cuba, Italy, Mexico, Russia, England and given multiple other performances throughout Europe as well as appearances at International Trumpet Guild Conferences and International Women’s Brass Conferences.

As a founding member and trumpeter of Stiletto Brass Quintet, Amy and the group have performanced at the Festival de Música de Cámara de Aguascalientes Mexico, the International Women’s Brass Conference, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, the Northeast Regional Tuba Euphonium Conference, been Artist Ensemble in Residence and toured throughout the United States. Stiletto Brass has also been guest artist with the Bradenton-Sarasota Pops Orchestra as well as the Heartland Festival Orchestra and released two recordings: Stiletto Brass Quintet with Doc Severinsen and Scarpe !.

Amy is Principal Trumpet of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra since 1999. She has also held Principal Trumpet positions with the Peoria Symphony, Heartland Festival Orchestra, and the Sinfonia da Camera. In addition, she performed as an extra and a sub with the St. Louis Symphony. Currently, Amy is a member of Monarch Brass Ensemble, and a past member of the Monarch Brass Quintet, Dallas Brass, Velvet Brass, Battle Creek Brass Band and Keith Brion’s New Sousa Band. She has performed with many renowned musicians including Doc Severinsen, former band leader of the Tonight Show Band with Johnny Carson; Italian jazz trumpet artist Andrea Tofanelli. Ron Romm, founding member of the Canadian Brass; and jazz trumpet artist Marvin Stamm. Amy can be heard on her solo CD Enjoying Life and on various Sinfonia da Camera recordings released by Albany Records. She has been a featured artist in the highly acclaimed international brass magazine The Brass Herald.

In demand as a pedagogue, Amy held an Artist in Residence in Fall 2023 at Penn State University, and given master classes at Eastern New Mexico University, the University of Louisville, University of Tennessee, and other universities throughout the United States, and at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory, the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Conservatoire of Bordeaux in France. Currently, she is a long-standing faculty member of Orvieto Musica, a chamber music festival held in Orvieto Italy and the Director of the festival’s TrumpetFest. Amy has published articles in the Brass Herald and the International Trumpet Guild Journal. Her doctoral research paper, A Descriptive Study of Selected Trumpet Concertos of the Soviet Union, included a lengthy bibliography of trumpet concertos from there and introduced these concertos to the trumpet community at large. Amy has served on the Board of Directors for the International Women’s Brass Conference and the Board of Directors for the International Trumpet Guild.

Amy currently holds a position as Artist in Residence and teaches trumpet, and coaches brass quintets and trumpet ensemble at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She is the first woman to serve on the brass faculty at the University of Illinois. Amy was also one of the few women to hold a full-time university trumpet professor position in the 1990’s, and also the first woman trumpet professor at Illinois State University. Then in 2019 Dr. Gilreath retired as Professor Emeritus of Trumpet at Illinois State University after serving on the faculty since 1990. During her time there she was the first faculty member to be awarded the Illinois State University Outstanding Creative Arts Award for her numerous national and international performances as a chamber musician, soloist and orchestral musician and many publications in international journals. She was also a recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award in the School of Music.

Her teachers include Ray Sasaki, Michael Tunnell, Vincent DiMartino, Rich Illman, Arnold Jacobs and Susan Slaughter.