Randall Hawes

RANDALL HAWES, bass trombonist, enjoys a diverse, multifaceted career as a performer, coach and teacher. Known for his collaborative abilities, he has stayed in demand for decades as a chamber musician, recitalist, teacher and orchestral player, including 35 years as bass trombonist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and three subsequent years as guest bass trombonist with The Cleveland Orchestra. Hawes also has performed, recorded, and toured with the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Washington National Opera and others, under conductors such as Günther Herbig, Neeme Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, Riccardo Muti, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Seiji Ozawa, Klaus Mäkelä, Valery Gergiev, Robert Spano, Fabio Luisi, Franz Welser-Möst, James Levine and many more. In 1995, he was invited by Sir Georg Solti to join the World Orchestra for Peace and has been on multiple tours since then, and additionally he spent over ten years as a member of the Saito Kinen Orchestra. In 2014, he joined the National Brass Ensemble, recording with them Gabrieli (2015) and Deified, Tim Higgin’s arrangement of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (2022). Mr. Hawes has performed and/or toured with the Grand Teton Music Festival, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Summit Brass and Burning River Brass, and he performs often with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque.

As a soloist, Hawes gave the world premiere performance of Concerto for Bass Trombone by Kenneth Fuchs at the Lätzsch Trombone festival in December of 2018 and has commissioned and performed numerous other works. A frequent recitalist, since 1998 most notably with pianist Kathryn Goodson, Mr. Hawes can be heard on three solo bass trombone releases with her (Melodrama, 2003; Barn Burner, 2010, Liquid Architecture, 2025). He can be heard as well as soloist and with hornist Gail Williams on Goodson’s chamber music release, Belle Nuit, from 2014. With Goodson and saxophonist Timothy McAllister, Hawes recorded Stephen Rush’s Lightrays, composed for the trio. Hawes and Goodson continue to perform, record and commission new works for bass trombone and piano.

Mr. Hawes began college as a Music Education major, playing trombone and sousaphone in the marching band and studying with William Rivard at Central Michigan University, and later with Byron McCollough at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After school he toured first for ten months in a production of Porgy and Bess, then traveled for two years as a member of Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd. A fellowship summer at the Tanglewood Music Center preceded his win of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra bass trombone position in 1985. Hawes has been a guest master teacher at venues including the Australian Melbourne Festival of Brass, the Swedish Blekinge International Brass Academy (BIBA), the German Lätzsch Trombone Festival, the Gravissimo Low Brass Festival in Portugal, the Pokorny Low Brass Seminar, the Cleveland Trombone Seminar, the Third Coast Trombone Retreat and others. Since 2004 Mr. Hawes has been on the faculty at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, teaching trombone, bass trombone and brass chamber music, and has served in the same capacity at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 2014. As of 2023 he returns annually as a performing and teaching faculty member to the Aspen Music Festival. Randall Hawes performs on Bach trombones and the Lätzsch SL-620 Contrabass trombone.