Darby Hinshaw joined the San Diego Symphony in 2011. He was born into a casually musical family in San Francisco: His mother is a former organist who holds a Master of Music degree from SDSU, and his father is a great enthusiast of traditional Irish music. During his childhood he experimented with the Irish tin-whistle, the piano and the great highland bagpipes, and he frequently attended organ recitals, highland games and Irish sessions with his parents. He began playing the horn at the age of 12, and attended the “School of the Arts” high school in San Francisco. He joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in 1996, where he played principal horn on several critically acclaimed European tours. While still in the youth orchestra, Hinshaw attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied with SF Symphony hornists Bruce Roberts, Jonathan Ring and Robert Ward. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in 2005 and pursued his professional options instead of attending graduate school.
Prior to his arrival in San Diego, Darby Hinshaw made a place for himself in the many regional symphony orchestras in Northern California, playing principal horn in the Marin Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony and Stockton Symphony. Over a period of six years as a freelancer, he would appear with the horn sections of sixteen different orchestras, traveling all over the Bay Area and parts of the San Joaquin Valley. He also performed frequently with the San Francisco Symphony and appears on their recent recordings of Mahler’s 2nd and 8th symphonies on SFS Media, as well as the Mahler episode of the Keeping Score series on PBS.