'Jazz' Oboe

The first time I heard Paul McCandless, live, in Sander's Theater in Cambridge, MA I was amazed. As a classically trained professional oboist I had never encountered an oboist who made a living playing jazz.

My friends who play jazz or Broadway shows tell me that the oboe is the most difficult double. Maybe it's the reeds, or the way the lips work. Students tell me that their ensemble leaders say that oboe is "not a jazz instrument." I tell them to try to play anyway.

McCandless' mastery of the oboe is authentic; he studied the same material that the classically trained orchestral musicians learn and with some of the best teachers in the business, but he just did something a bit different.

As a composer and performer, he makes the oboe soar outside the rarefied air of the classical music concert hall and with consummate refinement and technique.