Amy Vaillancourt-Sals

Amy Vaillancourt-Sals has always been a musician at heart. She started with the violin, has dabbled in guitar, and sung in a choir for eight years. She began playing the Horn when she was ten years old, and carried that love of horn playing through a Bachelor’s in Music Education at CSU Fresno as well as a Master’s in Horn Performance at the University of Oregon.

Since completing her Master’s and moving to Portland in 2007, she has found her niche playing in a variety of musical pit orchestras. Favorite recent performances include Broadway Rose Theatre Company’s “The King and I” and Pixie Dust Production’s spectacle “Beauty and the Beast”. In addition to having a passion for musicals, she has a keen interest in dabbling with electro-acoustic music, a passion that led her to recording with the world-renowned duo Matmos on their album “The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast”.

As a teacher, Amy works towards developing a trusting relationship with her students, and she maintains two important goals for them. One is to instruct them in how to be self-referenced– to “teach a man to fish”. Secondly, that the music learning process is a meaningful and joyous experience. After all, they call it “playing” for a reason!

Amy Vaillancourt-Sals teaches French Horn