Bethany Vaughan is an active freelance trumpet player and educator currently residing in the Chicago area. She has a varied career and can be found performing with orchestras, playing weddings and church services, performing with Axiom Brass, and even recording for commercials. For performance inquiries, send her a message through the "Contact" portion of this website.

Bethany has performed with orchestras all over the country, including the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, as well as the orchestras of Houston, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Louisville, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Rochester, Syracuse, and Virginia (Norfolk) among others. She has performed under the batons of Riccardo Muti, Franz Welser-Möst, Klaus Mäkelä, Jaap van Zweden, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Enrique Mazzola, Alexander Shelley, and Juraj Valčuha, to name a few.

With Axiom Brass, Bethany has toured nationally and internationally and been a part of three recording projects. Axiom's live album with trombonist Christian Lindberg, In Full Bloom, can be found on all major streaming platforms. Bethany has also performed with Seraph Brass, 3rd Coast Brass, Stiletto Brass, and Monarch Brass. With Talos Brass, she was named a finalist in the MTNA National Chamber Music Competition.

Bethany also loves to teach and is on the faculty at Lake Forest College and the Music Institute of Chicago in addition to maintaining her private studio. She has been a trumpet sectional coach at multiple area high schools and currently teaches at Lake Forest High School.

A native of Houston, TX, at eight years old Bethany fell in love with the cornet, later switching to trumpet and attending Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (while studying with former Principal Trumpet of the Houston Symphony, James Austin).

Bethany then completed a Bachelor of Music in Trumpet Performance with a minor in Environmental and Sustainability Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where she studied modern trumpet with John Rommel and baroque trumpet with Kris Kwapis. She can be heard with the IU Wind Ensemble on Beethoven: Works, recorded on the Naxos label. Bethany has experience in many styles of music; while at Indiana, she was a member of Mariachi Perle del Medio Oeste, the IU Brass Band, and Latin fusion band Matixando, in addition to participating in the more "standard" ensembles.

After graduating from IU in 2021, Bethany received a full scholarship to pursue her masters degree at Northwestern University, where she studied with Michael Sachs (Principal Trumpet- the Cleveland Orchestra), Thomas Rolfs (Principal Trumpet- the Boston Symphony) and David Bilger (retired Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra) before graduating in 2023.

Bethany has spent summers as a trumpet fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School (as a member of the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra), the National Arts Centre Orchestra Mentorship Program, the Round Top Festival Institute, and the Texas Music Festival. She has performed at Ravinia, Bravo! Vail, the Blossom Music Center, and the Peninsula Music Festival and has been a Resident Artist at the Caroga Lake Music Festival since 2024.

In her free time, Bethany loves to play pickle ball, read, run, play her Switch, and spend time with her husband, trumpeter and composer Aaron DuBois. Soli Deo gloria!

BIOGRAPHY

PC: Jeff Osarczuk