Caruthers roams where Mozart did

Ann Caraway Caruthers has used her French horn to travel across the world and, occasionally, through time.

Caruthers, a 2021 graduate of Germantown High School, recently returned from a month-long festival in the Czech Republic. 

“We played in so many gorgeous venues with so much history,” Caruthers said.

The Prague Summer Nights Festival in Tabor and Prague, Czech Republic, ran from June 15 to July 15. Caruthers had to audition for her spot playing French horn in the festival, an instrument she has played since sixth grade.

“I have been playing for 10 years, but it does not feel like I have been playing that long,” Caruthers said.

Highlights of the trip included playing music from the famous opera “Don Giovani” in the Estates Theater in Prague, where the show first premiered in October of 1787.

The opera includes music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which Caruthers said was hard for her to get out of her head.

“I was walking around the building where Mozart worked,” she said.

Another piece was “Symphony of the New World,” composed by the great Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak in 1893.

“It was very fun to play, and it is a very famous piece of music that had a huge influence on American composers at the time,” Caruthers said.

She is now a senior at Florida State University majoring in Music Performance. Her next step is to go to graduate school, but she would like to play in an orchestra one day.

“We are very proud of her and all that she has accomplished,” her mother, Tammy Caruthers said.

Her summer travels are not over. She will leave on July 25 to attend the International Horn Society Conference in Denver and then get on a plane again on Aug. 7 for the Women in Brass Conference in Japan.