Facebook pixel Mary Gale | Pepperdine University | Seaver College Skip to main content
Pepperdine | Seaver College

Mary Gale

Email: Mary.Gale@pepperdine.edu

Mary Gale, clarinetist with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra for twenty-five years, played in the first-ever production of Wagner's Ring Cycle in Los Angeles in 2010. She has played with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Santa Barbara Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Joffrey Ballet Orchestra, Royal Ballet Orchestra, Los Angeles Concert Orchestra, William Hall Chorale, and Honolulu Symphony. She is principal clarinetist of the Amara Ensemble and was featured as guest principal clarinetist with the San Diego Symphony. She performs in the Motion Picture, TV, and Recording Industry.

Known for her exquisite tone, musicality and sensitive ensemble playing, her major teachers were Mitchell Lurie, Harold Wright, and Larry Combs. She studied chamber music with Marcel Moyse and James Galway, and breathing techniques with Arnold Jacobs. She attended the Music Academy of the West with Maurice Abravanel, conductor, where she was a scholarship recipient and winner of the Simon Kovar Award for outstanding performance. She is the recipient of a Theodore Presser Foundation Award. A graduate of California State University, Northridge, she later was professor of clarinet there for twelve years.

Artists she has worked with include Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Vladimir Chernov, Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, Eric Halfvarson, Anna Netrebko, Luciano Pavarotti, Samuel Ramey, Erwin Schrott, Frederica von Stade, Carol Vaness and Rolando Villazón; Conductors: Richard Armstrong, Philippe Auguin, Richard Bonynge, Valery Gergiev, Grant Gershon, Kent Nagano, Julius Rudel and Simon Rattle. In musical theater, she has worked with Richard Burton, Christine Ebersole, Robert Goulet and Richard Harris.

Mary Gale is married to conductor James Martin and has two daughters who all share a passion for the arts.