Ronnal Ford is a 2008 graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, obtaining his Master of Music in English horn and Oboe performance. He also received his Bachelor of Music Performance in English horn and Oboe performance from the afore mentioned school in June of 2006. Mr. Ford also begun his teaching career in the 2006-2007 school year at Winston-Salem State University as an Adjunct Professor teaching applied violin, oboe and bassoon lessons and Introduction to Music classes. He began playing music at the age of 6, but didn’t begin playing oboe until the age of 14. This was in fact his first wind instrument. He began his musical life as a pianist, studying at the Greensboro Music Academy, and then moved to play violin, following in the footsteps of his father in the fifth grade. He had learned all the strings instruments by the seventh grade, and was an accomplished violinist, playing in All-County and Regional All-State Honors Orchestras in Middle School. Still continuing to play violin and viola in high school, he decided to take upon another instrument, the oboe. After learning the oboe, he learned how to play all the other woodwinds as well, and decided that for college, oboe was his favorite. During high school, Mr. Ford played in several local groups, such as the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra as Principal Oboe and English horn, Greensboro Philharmonia as Assistant Principal and Second Oboe, and Greensboro Concert Band and All-County and Regional All-State Bands and Orchestras.

During his time in Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra, Mr. Ford realized that he had a natural affinity towards the English horn, and wanted to make sure that he included that in his arsenal of performance. At this point he started taking lessons on English horn as well as oboe with John Ellis, the oboe teacher at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the former principal oboist for the Hollywood Bowl Symphony. Now he has participated in such ensembles as the Winston Salem Symphony, Piedmont Wind Symphony and the Orchestra and Wind Ensemble of NCSA as an English hornist, as well as being one of the co-founders for the Winston-Salem Chamber Players, a chamber music group consisting of faculty at Winston-Salem State University.

In addition to being an oboist and English hornist, Mr. Ford has branched his performance career to become a woodwind specialist. This meant adding music for all of the flutes, clarinets, saxophones and the bassoon to his playing literature. He says that learning these instruments was not only something fun to do, but it helps understand other players’ parts better, what is difficult on certain instruments, how to aid other players when he is playing with them, intonation problems between different instruments and has learned many different ways of phrasing and grouping. Playing other instruments enabled me to play with those instruments in ways a lot of other musicians would overlook.