Vanessa Fralick joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal Trombone in 2013. Prior to her current position, Ms. Fralick played three seasons as Acting Associate Principal Trombone of the St. Louis Symphony. She won her first orchestral position with the San Antonio Symphony in 2009, while pursuing her master’s degree at The Juilliard School. Ms. Fralick completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, studying with Jeffrey Hall and Gordon Wolfe, and also spent one year at McGill University. She has performed with major orchestras in San Francisco, Montreal, Boston, Malaysia, Utah, and Jacksonville. She played two summers in the prestigious Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland.

 

An active educator, Vanessa is on faculty at the University of Toronto. Vanessa also performs frequently as a soloist, most recently as a guest artist at the 2018 and 2016 International Trombone Festivals, Trombonanza 2017 in Argentina, and the 2015 American Trombone Workshop in Washington, D.C. She has won first prize in several major competitions, including the 2012 Elora Festival Competition, 2011 Montreal Symphony Concerto Competition and 2010 Susan Slaughter International Solo Brass Competition, where she also performed as a guest artist at the International Women's Brass Conference. In 2009 she won concerto competitions both at Juilliard and at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.

 

While studying in the United States she received two generous grants from the Canada Council of the Arts. She is an alumna of the National Youth Orchestra and National Academy Orchestra of Canada, and occasionally plays alongside her brass-playing parents in the Niagara Symphony Orchestra in her hometown of St. Catharines, ON. She is also a core member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's beach volleyball team, the Gustav Bahlers.

In 2013, during her time as a member of the Trombones of the St. Louis Symphony, Vanessa recorded a full length album of trombone quartets entitled Fleur de Lis.