Hans Brightbill
Eternal Spirit
Jan 27 & 28, 2018
[See image gallery at www.socophil.org]Hans Brightbill grew up in a musical family, starting cello at age eleven after several years of studying piano with his mother. While still in high school, Mr. Brightbill served as principal cello in the Orange County Youth Symphony and California All State Honor Orchestra. Balancing his love of music with a keen interest in science, he went on to pursue a double degree in cello performance and biological sciences at U.C. Irvine, where he studied cello with Stephen Erdody and served as the principal cello for the university orchestra. Even as he went on to pursue a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at UCLA and postdoctoral training in immunology at UC Berkeley, Mr. Brightbill continued to play the cello in university orchestras and chamber music ensembles.
Mr. Brightbill is principal cello in several Bay Area community orchestras, including the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony and Sonoma County Philharmonic. He recently performed Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque for Cello and Orchestra, regarded as one of the towering pieces for a cello soloist. An avid chamber musician, he regularly performs and attends local chamber music workshops including several years at the renowned St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar at Stanford University. He has studied chamber music with members of several other nationally-recognized ensembles, including the Alexander, St. Lawrence and Orion String Quartets. He has also continued to study cello with Robert Howard, Sandy Walsh-Wilson and Andy Luchansky. When not playing his music, Mr. Brightbill works as a scientist at Genentech in the department of Discovery Immunology, developing therapeutics for diseases of the immune system. He lives with his husband Anthony in San Francisco.
