Barbara Jöstlein Currie

Barbara Jöstlein Currie joined the Met Orchestra in 1998, as Assistant Horn. A year later, she won the Fourth Horn position, which she has held since 1999. Growing up in Chicago and studying with former CSO musicians Phil Farkas and Nancy Fako, she left for New York to study with former Met Principal Horn Julie Landsman at the Juilliard School on a full scholarship. When she was a sophomore, she was the runner-up in the Third Horn audition with the San Diego Symphony which led to the opportunity to spend a year with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra as their Associate and Third Horn.

Barbara has performed frequently at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with the San Diego Symphony during the summer season, as well as one complete season as Second Horn with the San Diego Symphony.

Barbara is a longtime Professor of Horn at the Bard College Conservatory and has been on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music pre-college division and Mannes Prep division and has taught at Juilliard’s pre-college division.

She has has given master classes at many universities such as the Colburn School, Indiana University, Cincinnati Conservatory, University of North Carolina, University of Illinois as well as in Japan and Europe as well as for many international festivals such as Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Lessonface and for Marcus Bonna’s Lyra Bragança during the pandemic.

She was a featured artist at the International Horn Symposium in Kingsville, Texas, where she shared a program with Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Horn Jennifer Montone and Utah Symphony associate hornist Julia Pilant, and performed with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra horn section in recital at IHS Montreal.

Barbara has performed on the Barbie Movie and on Billie Eilish’s Grammy award winning song “What was I Made For?” and is active in the recording industry, playing both horn and Wagner tuba in movies such as Spike Lee’s High and Low, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, the Coen brothers movies True Grit and O Brother Where Art Thou?, Contagion starring Matt Damon, and with musicians such as Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga and Sting, recording in both NYC and Los Angeles.

Barbara has received two patents: one for her new magnetic pencil holder, Brass Witch, and another patent for her newest product, Styl Witch, a magnetic pencil and stylus combo manufactured in Nuremberg, Germany.