An award winning clarinetist and seasoned music educator, Mario Hunter is known internationally as a top-notch professional musician with over 30 years of experience. He has taught both publicly and privately in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Nevada, North Carolina, and as far away as Mykonos, Greece on the elementary, secondary, and college levels. Many of his students have gone on to become great musicians and scholars and/or highly creative, well-disciplined professionals in non-music related fields. Hunter began appearing as a clarinet soloist with symphony orchestras after winning a concerto competition sponsored by the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra when he was only 16 years old.  He has held principal clarinet positions with Maryland’s Salisbury and Goucher Chamber Symphony Orchestras, and has performed within the clarinet sections of the North Carolina and Maryland Symphony Orchestras, to name a few. Hunter has also performed as a clarinetist with the late Ray Charles in the Ray Charles Orchestra. As a woodwind doubler (clarinet, saxophones and flute), he recently performed live with Aretha Franklin in the Aretha Franklin Orchestra at the Durham Performing Arts Center. Throughout his career, he has performed with other World Class Musicians and Entertainers such as Tommy Tune, The Coasters, Charo,  Anna Gesteyer, and Samuel Ramey of The Metropolitan Opera. He has participated in world and American premiers of works by such prominent composers as Gunther Schuller and Vaclav Nelhybel, and has played under the batons of other major conductor/composers such as Fouad Fakhouri,  Karel Husa and Hans Werner Henze.  Hunter has also worked for several years as a clarinetist, bass clarinetist and saxophonist with the Fayetteville (N.C.) Symphony Orchestra. He is on the Board of Directors of The American Federation of Musicians Union Local 342 in Charlotte, N.C., where he is a member in good standing.

Mr. Hunter holds a Master’s Degree in clarinet performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he was a student of David Shifrin, and a Bachelor’s Degree and High School Diploma with concentration in clarinet from the UNC School of the Arts, where he studied with Robert Listokin. Other prominent clarinet teachers and mentors were Carmine Campione and Edward Palanker. He has attended The Governor’s School of North Carolina, Eastern Music Festival, and The National Music Camp at Interlochen where he was co-principal clarinetist of the University Sinfonietta and Wind Ensemble. As a professional hobby of sorts, he appears as a featured extra in the Motion Picture and Television Industry and can be clearly seen in the Emmy Award winning HBO movie Something The Lord Made.