Brenda Schuman-Post, oboist
oboe lessons, english horn, oboe d'amore, concerts, lectures, workshops
Uniquely versatile and influencing a wider view of the technical and expressive capabilities of the oboe and oboist, BRENDA SCHUMAN-POST has performed in almost every conceivable venue for almost every type of audience. Jazz Now magazine called her an "oboe advocate" and both her Oboe of the World and Sonic Forest CDs are acclaimed as "groundbreaking!" She's built a career on versatility, making the oboe and its music accessible. She's a Buffet Crampon artist. Brenda presents entertaining concerts, master classes, lecture-performances and private lessons, and has performed in Europe, Indonesia, Central America, East Africa, and throughout the United States.
A San Francisco based free lance orchestral musician, she's the founder/director of Sonic Forest, a chamber ensemble devoted to music inspired by nature and providing music based education and entertainment to diverse audiences, with unique and special devotion to senior citizens and audiences in under-served communities. Winner of the 2003 Star Trek Idol Talent Search, she does indeed play "pre-warp classics to interplanetary fusion".
Her lecture-performances are simultaneously educational and entertaining and geared towards any audience. Brenda is the first musician in history to witness every detail from searching for and harvesting an African Blackwood tree in East Africa to the making of a top of the line woodwind instrument in Europe. Sustainable African Blackwood: Harvesting the Music Tree offers an eye-opening look into the people and places, environmental and social issues surrounding this commercially threatened tree from which flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bagpipes are made. Oboes of the World is about world music and what the sound of the oboe means to humanity. For students and professionals she offers Marketing Yourself in the Performing Arts and Extended Techniques for the Oboe. Her Textural (free) Improvisation Workshops bond musicians and non-musicians alike and teaches cooperation.
Brenda is the published author of several articles including stories about her Star Trek related experiences and her East African adventures. She's won six grants, all in support of her work as an improvising composer.
Brenda studied with Ronald Roseman, Marc Lifschey and in master class with Heinz Holliger. She is a prominent freelance orchestral, chamber, studio recording artist and private teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and plays exclusively on the Buffet Crampon 3613 and 3613 Greenline oboe.
