Cellist Gunnery Sergeant Caroline Bean Stute of Lakeland, Fla., joined “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band in August 2014. She was appointed assistant principal in January 2020.

Gunnery Sgt. Stute began her musical training on piano at age 6 and cello at age 14. After graduating in 2002 from Harrison School for the Arts in Lakeland, she attended the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in cello performance in 2006. In 2008 she completed a master’s degree in cello performance and literature from Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington. In 2020 she earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York where she was the recipient of a teaching fellowship. Her instructors included Steven Doane of Eastman and Janos Starker of IU.

Prior to joining “The President’s Own,” Gunnery Sgt. Stute was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Fla.; the Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra in Cleveland; and the new music ensemble Hotel Elefant in New York. She has performed at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut; the Aldeburgh Festival in Snape, England; and the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida. She was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Mass., and has taught at Queens College and the Harlem Opus 118 School, both in New York. In 2012 and 2014 she volunteered in Central America as a guest teaching artist for the Honduran National Youth Orchestra, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa.  

Gunnery Sgt. Stute performs regularly at the White House for State Dinners, receptions, and other White House functions, and throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.