Jane Murray’s Biography
Jane Murray holds the solo English horn chair with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, a position she has held since 1978. Her many solos have been hailed in the press as "elegant", "haunting", "wistful", "beguiling", "spellbinding" and "scrumptious"!
Long a champion of oboe d'amore and English horn, she has premiered several new works and was recipient in 2012 of a RI State Council for the Arts Grant for a series of concerts of music for English horn and organ performed in several of the area’s magnificent churches.
She also is an accomplished oboist, and performs regularly with several New England area orchestras and choruses, in the pit for Broadway shows, with the Hilltop Trio, and with the wind quintet Northeast Chamber Ensemble, who were the recipients of a Continental Harmony Grant from the NEA, resulting in a series of concerts in collaboration with Gospel choirs on both coasts.
She is a devoted pedagogue, training oboists of all ages, and is on the faculty of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School and the University of Rhode Island, where she teaches Oboe and Somatics: Movement Training for Musicians. She has served on the faculty of the Vermont Youth Orchestras Summer program, and was the artistic director of the Northeast Quintet Camp.
She has performed as soloist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Ocean State Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Barrington, Fall River Symphony and “Concerts on the Island" Chamber Orchestras, and has been featured oboist at the Music on The Hill Series in 2021, the Newport Music Festival from 1993-2003, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in 1995, 2008, and 2018, and at Vermont's Reveille Festival from 2011-2014.
She has performed much of the solo repertoire for English horn and orchestra including Jennifer Higdon's Soliloquy, Gordon Jacob's Rhapsody, Copland's Quiet City with trumpet virtuosos Rolf Smedvig and Joseph Damien Foley, Sibelius' Swan of Tuonela, Reicha's Recitative and Rondo, Vaughn Williams' Folksong Variations and Donizetti's Concertino, as well as Bach's Concerto for Oboe D'amore and Orchestra.
Since 2004, she has been a licensed Body Mapping Educator, teaching Body Mapping for musicians: a somatic awareness curriculum which can help musicians of all ages retrain their movement to allow them to play without pain and avoid injury. In addition to giving individual sessions in her home studio, she is in demand as a clinician and has presented classes and workshops at UMass Amherst, SUNY Purchase, Providence College, Boston Woodwind Society, and for the International Double Reed Society 2016 Conference in Columbus, GA. She teaches the course for music majors at Rhode Island College and URI.
She shares a 3 acre spread in Jamestown, Rhode Island with her husband, wood artist Doug Brill, and their 2 dogs and 2 cats.
For more information about Jane, visit her website https://janeoboe.com/