Welcome to my Portfolio. I've spent 25 years in the profession of classical music, doing what I was trained to do and what I felt I "should be" doing. I've acheived a fair amount of success behaving, and by the measure of orchestral acheivement--how every oboist in the United States is judged--I've ascended to the highest point that women have been able to attain so far in this profession. (A rather misogynist and tradition-based industry, the orchestral world has had an entirely male roster in its most coveted oboe chairs to date.)

A few years ago, perhaps in what could be called my mid-life crisis, I realized that I was not saying everything I was called to say with my music. I set out to illuminate the music I felt needed the help and advocacy I was uniquely able to give to it. As a side effect, I frequently ended up doing  what was previously unthinkable, which was to call out the ridiculous, unspoken elements of my industry which have suppressed so many voices which deserve to be heard.

In the midst of this, I realized I had been suppressing my own music for decades. My training in composers we revere did not have any composers such as myself in it. I would like to introduce myself by sharing my own recent compositions. I perform all the parts (piano, oboe, and English horn) in the videos here.

One of the first things I realized was missing from my life was a rich history of dead women composers. While it is now fashionable to program living women composers occasionally, ignoring the contributions of women who composed throughout history is a disservice to everyone. Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) has become very important to me. She was a British piano and composition prodigy who made her music happen in the framework of a society which worked against her. British musical careers were made and broken by the BBC in her time, and she was very much maligned by this historically misogynist organization throughout her lifetime. Though her centenary is this year, it went virtually uncelebrated by most major musical institutions. Her oboe works stand at the very top of our repertoire; she has a huge ouevre of five fantastic and colorful symphonies and countless other fascinating works.

Since I have immersed myself in Gipps' work, I feel bizarrely now that I am friends with this dead woman. I began my study of her work with her Piper of Dreams for oboe solo several years ago after purchasing many of her works, still in her handwriting, from the UK. I played Piper, which was written for her best friend, Marion Brough, many times, but the work in my own hands never inspired the publisher to digitize the music, and its lack of play continued despite my advocacy. When I performed the work on the first of my Lockdown Solo Oboe Concerts, people were listening because they were held hostage in their houses at the beginning of the pandemic! I was able to convince the founder of the international Virtual Oboe Competition to program it as required repertoire. As a result, the publisher digitized the music, and it was played by hundreds of people all over the internet. The work is entering our standard repertoire now.

Similarly, I projected her Sea-Shore Suite onto Youtube from my own house in Summer 2020 from handwritten, difficult-to-read pages. People started to purchase it, and  the work suddenly got digitized and is now available for download in an easily-read form by anyone. François Leleux, the famous French soloist, had never programmed a work by any woman composer that I have ever seen. However, he programmed this one for his recital at the Proms in Summer 2021. It was cancelled due to Covid travel restrictions, but I am hopeful he will take it up again.

I learned the Oboe Concerto, op. 20, from a nearly unreadable score. In my research, I have found no evidence of any performances since the London premiere with Marion Brough and an amateur orchestra in 1941. I made a study video of the work, since none existed. The work stands with the best oboe concerti in our repertoire. While people may say this concerto "sounds like the Vaughan Williams Concerto" (Ralph Vaughan Williams taught Gipps), Gipps actually wrote her concerto three years before Vaughan Williams wrote his. After an unbelievable amount of pushing, I found kindred spirits in the Richmond Symphony and Valentina Peleggi, and under the auspisces of the RSO, I gave the American premiere, and second through fourth performances of the work, in November, 2021. The score, part, and piano reduction are all now digitized, and students are beginning to play this work. Hopefully, their teachers will take it up as well. With such a small concerto repertoire, it makes no sense to leave one this good out.

Here are several recent performances of works I believe deserve to become mainstream oboe repertoire.

These works are ones I feel should be in our repertoire, but with few exceptions, are not considered mainstream works.

Those in power have always sought to control society through art. In this lecture/recital, I explore the Nazi idea of "Entartete Kunst" or "Degenerate Art," and how it rather effectively diminished the works of so many composers. I demonstrate how this idea has been extended by other means and other political parties to silence other composers. This was the last live program on my series called "Coffee, Patisserie, and Classical Music" before the Covid-19 pandemic, on March 7, 2020. Composers featured here are obvious ones such as Paul Hindemith (his Sonata for English horn and Piano), Pavel Haas (Suite for Oboe and Piano), Franz Reizenstein (Three Concert Pieces for Oboe and Piano), and Ernst Krenek (Sonatina for Oboe Solo), but I also draw and explain the connection to other composers who were not rejected by society for being Jewish, married to Jews, or considered modernists. Rebecca Clarke (I'll Bid My Heart Be Still) and William Grant Still (Incantation and Dance), writing pieces in the same decade as these other composers, are also discussed here. To toggle amongst the presented works, click on the timings in the Youtube program description.

One of my greatest pleasures is being the conduit by which other composers express themselves to an audience. I have worked with everyone from student composers to super-famous living composers such as Christoper Rouse and Kevin Puts, whose oboe concertos I have recorded with the Albany and Baltimore Symphonies, respectively (releases upcoming.) One of my longest standing relationships is with the composer, David Ludwig. I have had the privilege to premiere several of his oboe works, including "The Catherine Wheel," and "Pleiades: Seven Microludes for Oboe and Piano." I have enjoyed a rich association with the composer Althea Talbot-Howard during the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, you can see many other living composers I've collaborated with in other sections of this portfolio, though I have done many more premieres and collaborations than I can collate here.

I believe this represents the most unusual series of oboe recitals ever in the history of the instrument. I gave eleven consecutive weekly recitals to a huge online audience (80,000 and counting) during the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine. Included are numerous premieres by a diverse group of composers, seminal repertoire for the oboe alone, some pop tunes, and a complete survey of G.P. Telemann's Twelve Fantasies. You can watch my audio and video production skills improve over the course of these eleven weeks!

Here is a set of photos I've made over the past several months documenting what the highest eschelons of the classical music and the orchestral world look like. Also included are music videos with visual components.

I love a lot of the standard repertoire for the oboe. One reason that my beloved instrument is not considered a solo instrument in this country is its lack of visibility as a solo instrument. Our traditional recital repertoire comprises only about twenty pieces. I'm sharing some of those traditional works and composers here because I believe in what they have to say. I also know that many people cannot/will not judge a performer unless it is on "standard repertoire," an approach I think would benefit from some change. I have appreciated the opportunity to share some of the other composers and their works here which have been unreasonably excluded from this traditional repertoire. Thank you for reading and watching!

I am constantly exploring the idea of what music is, and to whom it belongs. The relationship between composer and performer fascinates me. The majority of my career and notoriety has been focused on the interpretation and translation elements of music, but my world is much richer now that I am actively creating music as well. To further explore this relationship, and to hopefully encourage people to explore it with me, I have started a concert series called "Coffee, Patisserie, and Classical Music." It is an informal morning concert the first weekend of each month. I have unlimited ideas and inspirations, but unfortunately, classical music ticket sales rarely if ever fund any sort of decent concerts. That is why I am applying for a Baker Artist Award. I hope to use the funds to present more concerts in collaboration with the fantastic performers and composers whose works deserve to be heard. I hope to advance the cause of my beloved instrument, the oboe, beyond its orchestral context and create meaningful live concerts for the people of Baltimore and live-streamed concerts for interested people around the world. Thank you for exploring my portfolio.