Marissa Honda

Marissa Honda is an oboist, professor, and music advocate living in Los Angeles, CA. She has performed and taught music in regions of the Philippines, Switzerland, Canada, the Middle East and throughout the US.

She has performed with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Santa Barbara Symphony, New West Symphony, Pasadena Symphony and Riverside Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2014, she won the English Horn position with the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra and received tenure in 2016 under music director Rei Hotoda. She is also an active freelancer in Los Angeles playing in recording orchestras for film and television, most recently including Star Trek: Lower Decks, the Orville, and Fargo.

In 2018, she was invited to present her paper on Building a Resilient Musical Identity for the International Society for Music Education Global Conference in Baku, Azerbajian as well as the College Music Society Conference in Vancouver. In 2017, she traveled to Manila, Philippines with MusAid Organization working with students in an el sistema orchestra program called Ang Misyon. While in school at USC, she received the Thornton Outreach Program Award in 2013 and upon finishing her DMA in Oboe Performance in 2017 was awarded the Music Teaching and Learning Departmental award. Marissa is a Teaching Artist with the LA Phil’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles in East LA. She is an active online professor, designing and teaching fully-online Music Fundamentals and Music Appreciation courses for Fresno City College and Madera Center in Central California.

She holds a Bachelors of Music degree from USC in Oboe Performance with a minor in communications, and a Masters of Music degree in Oboe Performance from USC. In 2017, she completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at USC in oboe performance, Music Teaching and Learning, Arts Leadership and Instrumental Conducting. Her primary teachers include Marion Kuszyk, Joel Timm, David Weiss, Allan Vogel and Rachel Aldrich. ​ She has spent summers performing at the National Orchestral Institute, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Lake George Music Festival Orchestra and others. In 2014, Marissa performed Copland’s Quiet City as English horn soloist with the American Youth Symphony. She can periodically be seen as an on screen musician for the popular 2000s FOX TV series GLEE. ​As an advocate for new music, she is currently working on a solo recording project featuring music newly arranged and composed for the English horn, recorded at Hollywood’s Capitol Records recording studios to be released in the future.