Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Ethan Gurwitz (b. 2000) is a composer, French horn player, and educator based in East Lansing, Michigan.
His compositions have been performed by the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own”, Sandbox Percussion, the Scottish Horns, the Metropolitan Winds, the SMU Meadows Wind Ensemble, Broadway musician and recording artist Ron Wilkins, the 2023 & 24 EAMA Resident String Quartets, the Horn Choirs of UT Butler and SMU Meadows, soprano Bethany Jelinek, and hornist Shea Kells-Murphy, among others. He was named a 2023 Nadia Boulanger Fellow and a 2024 Shea Family Fellow to the European American Musical Alliance Institute in Paris, France. His composition instructors include Omar Thomas, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Donald Grantham, Lane Harder, Xi Wang, and Robert J. Frank.
In the Fall of 2025, he will begin his doctoral degree in music composition at Michigan State University. His prior education includes a master’s in music composition from the University of Texas Butler School of Music, and two degrees in music composition (BM) and applied mathematics (BS) at SMU, with recognition as Standard Bearer for both the Meadows School of the Arts and Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.
He participated in the Wind Ensembles, Symphony Orchestras, Operas, and French Horn Studios at both SMU and UT – and he has studied horn with Mr. Gregory Hustis, Alex Kienle, and Patrick Hughes. His performance on horn has taken him many places, from two concerts at Carnegie Hall to the 2022 International D-Day Memorial Service in Normandy, France. He has also performed with the Victoria Symphony and the Austin Chamber Music Festival Orchestra.
From 2024-25, he worked as a French horn lesson instructor for Eanes ISD (Westlake HS and Hill Country MS) and Round Rock ISD (Hopewell MS, Hernandez MS, and Stony Point HS). For the 2023-24 school year, he worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for the UT Butler Composition Department. As a part of this position, he served as President and Coordinator of CLUTCH Committee, leading four performances of new works by UT composers. He also served as president of the SMU Meadows Emerging Sounds Committee (2021-22), featuring semesterly performances of new works by SMU composers.
[Updated: 7/3/25]
