The 2021-2022 Season

Growing up in a house full of art, music, books, and bicycles in Iowa, Rachel Niketopoulos began her musical studies with piano as soon as she could climb onto the bench, and then she became fascinated with the horn at age 11. She did her formal musical training in the midwest before starting her first job in the Virginia Symphony’s horn section. Rachel joined the North Carolina Symphony in 2005. Along the way, she discovered the incredible world of early music and her teacher guru Richard Seraphinoff of Indiana University, who is also the maker of the horns she plays.

With her symphony colleague and husband Christopher, they have performed together on early horns with Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, Bach Akademie Charlotte, Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and North Carolina Baroque, in addition to being featured soloists with the NC Symphony. 

While the modern horn is what they usually take to work, the challenge, beauty, and historical significance of the “Fun horns” create a sound that takes audiences back to musical ancestors, a sound not heard in today’s orchestras. She plays copies of horns originally made by Haleri, Kerner, and Haas from Paris, Vienna, and Germany.

Rachel has been a certified instructor of the Alexander Technique for 15 years and a yoga instructor for 10 years.

She teaches horn and chamber music at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, and teaches the Alexander Technique to dance, theatre, and music students at UNC-Greensboro, and with Invested Musician’s online training course.

Christopher Caudill began playing the horn at age ten while living in London, England, with his family. Piano and violin lessons had failed to do the trick, but a London Symphony concert at the Barbican with famous soloist Barry Tuckwell made him fall in love with the horn. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he earned a B.A. in European History before studying horn with the Chicago Symphony’s former Principal Horn, Dale Clevenger. He was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the New World Symphony in Miami where he met his horn duet partner, Rachel Niketopoulos.

He has performed on Baroque and Classical Horns with Atlanta Baroque, North Carolina Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and Bach Akademie Charlotte. He and his wife Rachel, both members of the North Carolina Symphony, were featured Baroque Horn soloists with the NCSO in performances of the Vivaldi Concerto for Two Hunting Horns RV 539. 

Christopher plays on copies of historical instruments made by Richard Seraphinoff (Leichnambschneider, Vienna, c.1700; Anton Kerner, Vienna, c.1760; Courtois, Paris, c.1800).