Eli Epstein

Eli Epstein enjoys a multi-faceted career as performer, educator, conductor and author. Mr. Epstein was second horn of the Cleveland Orchestra (1987-2005), and horn professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music (1989-2005). He has appeared several times as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra. In 2005 Mr. Epstein left Cleveland and moved to Boston to devote more time and energy toward educational and creative endeavors. Mr. Epstein is on the Horn Faculty of the New England Conservatory(since 2009) and was Professor of Horn at Boston Conservatory at Berklee (2005-2026). Mr. Epstein's students hold positions as chamber musicians and professors and have won posts in more than 35 major orchestras in North America.

Throughout his career Mr. Epstein has worked with many distinguished conductors, notably Christoph von Dohnányi, Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. During his tenure in the Cleveland Orchestra, Mr. Epstein recorded most of the orchestral canon with Dohnányi, Boulez and Ashkenazy on Deutsche Grammophon, London Decca, Telarc and Teldec labels.

An active performer, Mr. Epstein has appeared on chamber programs at Jordan Hall, Severance Hall, Tanglewood, Philadelphia's Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Music Academy of the West, where he was on faculty (2005-2013), and the Aspen Music Festival, where he served as principal horn of the Aspen Chamber Symphony (2000-2012). Mr. Epstein has collaborated with the Borromeo and Brentano String Quartets, and has been guest principal horn for the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony. 

Music Director of the NEC Youth Brass Ensemble since 2009, Mr. Epstein has conducted college ensembles at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Cleveland Institute of Music, Longy School of Music, Music Academy of the West, NEC, and El Sistema in Venezuela.

Advocating the idea that music can be a meaningful and uplifting force in society, in 2009 Mr. Epstein won Grand Prize in the Entrepreneur the Arts Contest for his Inside Out Concerts, and appeared on Heartbeat of America with William Shatner. Drawing on years of experience as a performer, educator and entrepreneur, in 2013 Mr. Epstein joined the NEC Entrepreneurial Musicianship faculty to teach their survey course The Entrepreneurial Musician.

Eli Epstein’s book, Horn Playing from the Inside Out (third edition published in 2016, and eBook published on Apple Books in 2021) includes astonishing images from the MRI Lab at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen Germany. This book was celebrated in the International Horn Society’s journal as “an overwhelmingly stimulating and productive treatise…that will yield positive influence on legions of horn players…” It was also commended in Horn Matters: "Without a doubt the most physiologically correct book ever published on horn playing. Epstein presents a pedagogy that is truly informed by science, with new insights that should not be ignored." 

Orchestral Excerpts for Low Horn, Mr. Epstein's album, was released in 2014 on Apple iTunes, then remastered and re-released in 2026 and is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, Medianet/Audible, Pandora, Qobuz, Tidal, and YouTube Music. The album was acclaimed in HornWorld as "a perfect sequel to (Krebiehl's) original horn excerpts CD...you would be hard pressed to find more nuanced, musically substantial performances anywhere."

Mr. Epstein earned his Bachelor of Music Degree magna cum laude from the Eastman School of Music.