William “Bill” Kay Kearns

January 17, 1928 - March 12, 2020

William (Bill) Kay Kearns, 92, former professor of French horn and music history at the University of Colorado, died on March 12, 2020 at his apartment in Bay Park, Pinole, California, where he had lived for the past five years.

Before taking the position in Boulder in 1965, Bill taught horn at The Ohio State University and played first horn with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra between 1952 and 1965. He was also a notable scholar of American classical and folk music, active for many years in the Sonneck Society (later the Society for American Music), and first director of the American Music Research Center, which he established at the University of Colorado in 1992, combining collections acquired from Dominican College in San Rafael, California with local collections of Colorado folk music, sheet music, and the papers of Colorado composers.

Bill was born on January 17th, 1928 in Wilmington, Ohio, the son of Roy and Marie Kearns. His brother Warren was born in 1929 and died in 2007. In 1954, Bill married Sophia Coumanter, daughter of Greek immigrants, in Columbus, Ohio. They had two children, Andrew, born in 1956, and Kathryn, born in 1957.

Bill studied piano and trumpet as a child, becoming proficient on the latter instrument. During his years at Wilmington High School he served as drum major, participated in music contests, and played with a dance band comprised of students from Wilmington College. He attended Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan during the summer of 1944 and entered Ohio State University to major in music in 1945.

His music studies were interrupted by service in the Army from 1946-48, during which time he was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany and served in the unit band as drum major, also playing in a dance band for USO shows outside of his normal duties.

Continuing his studies at Ohio State after his Army service, Bill made the decision to switch from trumpet to French horn. In addition to his Bachelor’s degree, he pursued a Master’s degree in musical theory and composition from Ohio State, completed in 1954, and a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, completed in 1965. During that year he accepted the position of at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, in addition to teaching, he established a Ph.D. program in Musicology and served as the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for several years.

Bill and his wife Sophia, a painter, were both granted fellowships to the Ossabaw Island artist colony in Georgia in the fall of 1978. There he composed a set of twelve pieces for unaccompanied horn titled “The Ossabaw Sketches.”

Bill was an avid hiker and lover of nature. For several summers in the 1970s he collaborated with members of the Colorado Mountain Club in organizing and participating in a most unusual music festival, given in a mountain meadow at 11,000 feet at the end of a three-mile hike. The nucleus of the “Altissimo” orchestra was a group of community musicians filled out by university students and colleagues.

During his retirement, Bill continued to perform with the pianist Grace Asquith and her Chamber Ensemble con Grazia in a number of concerts in the Boulder area.

His wife Sophia died in 2014, and he moved to Pinole, California the following year. He is survived by his son Andrew, his daughter Kathy, and two grandchildren, Codah Concannon and Tomás Kearns.

Bill was a member of the marching band in 1945. He played Trumpet.