THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Faculty Recital
Hana Beloglavec, Trombone
Matt Hightower, Tuba
Read
Gainsford, Piano
Thursday, November 20, 2025
7:30 p.m. | Longmire Recital Hall
PROGRAM
Aria et Polonaise
14 Romances, Op. 34
Joseph Jongen (1873–1953)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
The Muse (1873–1943)
Arion
Sonata for Tuba and Piano, Op. 34
Hana Beloglavec, trombone
Read Gainsford, piano
Trygve Madsen
Andante sostenuto (1940–2022)
Allegro energico
Allegro moderato
Bone Soup
Yorke and CO
Matt Hightower, tuba
Read Gainsford, piano
Hana Beloglavec, trombone
Marc Mellits (b. 1966)
arr. Matt Hightower
Matt Hightower, tuba
Read Gainsford, piano
Twenty Tricky Tunes
Zoe Cutler Klezmer (b. 1996)
Sunny Gallop
Hana Beloglavec, trombone
Matt Hightower, tuba
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Trombonist and pedagogue Hana Beloglavec has a dynamic career performing as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and teaching at Florida State University. Beloglavec has performed as a guest artist soloist at the 2022 International Women’s Brass Conference and with the U.S. Army Orchestra at the 2020 American Trombone Workshop. Her debut album, Bayou Home, was released through Summit Records in February 2023. This project was funded through the State of Louisiana Board of Regents ATLAS grant.
Also deeply interested in orchestral music, Beloglavec currently performs as the principal trombonist of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra and has served as the acting principal trombone with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra for the 22-23 season. In summer of 2019 she performed as a substitute for the Armenian National Philharmonic’s production of Verdi’s Otello – the first female brass player to perform with the orchestra. She has also performed as a substitute trombonist with the Chicago-based early-music ensemble Music of the Baroque as well as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Beloglavec was a core member of Seraph Brass from 2017-2020 and with the group performed and taught across the United States and the world. With Seraph, she was a guest artist at the 2019 Busan Maru International Music Festival in South Korea, the 2017 and 2018 Lieksa Brass Week in Finland, and the 2019 Artosphere Music Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Beloglavec received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Northwestern University, where she studied with Professors Michael Mulcahy, Douglas Wright, Timothy Higgins, Randall Hawes, and Christopher Davis. She completed the Master of Music degree at Yale University and the Bachelor of Music degree at Western Michigan University, where she studied with Professor Scott Hartman and Dr. Steve Wolfinbarger, respectively. In 2019 she was awarded the Early Career Award from Western Michigan University’s College of Fine Arts. Hana Beloglavec is currently an assistant professor of music at Florida State University and has formerly held positions teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Hana Beloglavec is a Shires Artist and an Ultimate Brass Artist.
A native of New Zealand, Read Gainsford began full-time music study with top piano teachers, Janetta MacStay and Bryan Sayer, before receiving a grant from the Woolf Fisher Trust and the top prize in the Television New Zealand Young Musician of the Year. Gainsford then relocated to London, where he studied privately with Brigitte Wild, a protégée of Claudio Arrau, before winning a place in the Advanced Solo Studies course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Joan Havill, graduating with the prestigious Concert Recital Diploma (premier prix).
Read Gainsford has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. He has made successful solo debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and has performed in many other venues, including the John F. Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Fairfield Halls, Birmingham Town Hall and St-Martin-in-the-Fields. He has recorded for the Amoris label, BBC Radio Three, Radio New Zealand’s Concert Programme, and has broadcast on national television in New Zealand, the UK and Yugoslavia.
Gainsford moved to the United States in 1992 to enter the doctoral program at Indiana University, where he worked with Karen Shaw and Leonard Hokanson. Since that time he has been guest artist for the American Music Teachers Association and has also given numerous recitals, concerto performances and master-classes. He has appeared at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, spent several summers at the Heifetz International Music Institute, is a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble X, and the Garth Newel Chamber Players. Gainsford has also
enjoyed working with such musicians as Jacques Zoon, William Vermuelen, Roberto Diaz, Eddie vanOosthuyse and Luis Rossi. Formerly on the faculty of Ithaca College, where he received the college-wide Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, Gainsford joined the piano faculty at Florida State University in 2005.
An award-winning teacher, performer, and composer, Matt Hightower is the Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the Florida State University College of Music and principal tuba with the Tallahassee Symphony. Prior to his appointment at Florida State, Hightower held similar positions at the University of Kentucky and Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
An avid chamber musician, Hightower was tubist with the Corpus Christi, Kingsville, and University of Kentucky Brass Quintets. He has also performed with the Lexington Philharmonic Brass Quintet, the Mirari Brass Quintet, the Atlas Tuba Quartet, Backburner Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble, and Concert:Nova
Some of his credits as a large ensemble performer include appearances with the Bloomington Camerata Orchestra, The Columbus (IN) Symphony, The Evansville Philharmonic, The Iceland Symphony Orchestra, The Louisville Ballet, The Jackson Symphony, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, the Victoria Bach Festival, the WCIT World Orchestra in Yerevan, Armenia, and David Baker’s 20th Century Bebop Band.
Hightower, a product of entrepreneurship, firmly believes in the importance of 21st-century musicians who acquire and maintain a diverse set of skills. As such, Hightower’s career embodies every aspect of the music process from composing and arranging to recording and performing. Hightower’s debut album, Re(in)spiration, released in 2019, was a finalist for the 2021 ITEA Roger Bobo Award for Excellence in Recording. According to the International Tuba Euphonium Association Journal, “Re(in)spiration illustrates Hightower’s outstanding skills as a performer and artist” and “showcases [his] total control of the horn, concrete fundamentals, and musical sincerity.” He can also be heard on the University of Texas Wind Ensemble’s Wine Dark Sea, Society of Composers, Inc.’s Flare: Vol 32, the University of Kentucky Faculty Brass Quintet’s New Music for Brass Quintet, and the University of Kentucky Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble’s Blue Thunder, amongst others.
Hightower himself has been the recipient of several awards, including the 2010 KMEA Intercollegiate Composition Contest, the 2021 ITEA Winston Morris Award for Tuba Ensemble Composition, and the 2023 ITEA Harvey Philips Award for Excellence in Composition for tuba in a solo role. Many of his arrangements and original works are published through Potenza Music and Absolute Brass Publishing. He is also a composer for Fannin Musical Productions, where he arranges and composes music for high school marching bands across the United States.
Hightower is also a dedicated educator whose students have won prizes at the Leonard Falcone Competition, Macauley Chamber Music Competition, and various regional and International Tuba-Euphonium Conferences including the inaugural ITEA Collegiate Ensembles Competitive Showcase Competition in 2023.
As an active member of the International Tuba Euphonium Association, Hightower has performed and adjudicated at several regional and international ITEA events and hosted the 2022 Midwest Regional Conference at the University of Kentucky.
Hightower earned the BM in music education from Murray State University, the MM in tuba performance from Indiana University, and the DMA from the University of Texas at Austin. His primary instructors were Ray Conklin, Daniel Perantoni, and Charles Villarrubia, with additional instruction in the field of composition from Mike D’Ambrosio, John Fannin, and P.Q. Phan. Matt Hightower is a B&S performing artist.