Stephen Taylor is principal oboe of Orchestra of St. Luke’s and holds the Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III solo oboe chair with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is also solo or principal oboe with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the American Composers Orchestra, the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, and the renowned contemporary music group Speculum Musicae. He plays co-principal oboe with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Stephen appears regularly as soloist and chamber musician at such major festivals as Spoleto, Caramoor Music Festival, Aldeburgh, Bravo! Colorado, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and Schleswig-Holstein.
Stereo Review named his recording of Mozart’s Sinfonie Concertante for winds the “Best New Classical Recording.” Included among his more than 200 other recordings are Bach arias with Itzhak Perlman and Kathleen Battle, Bach’s Oboe d’amore Concerto, as well as premiere recordings of the Wolpe Oboe Quartet; Elliott Carter’s Oboe Quartet, for which Stephen received a Grammy Award Nomination; and works of André Previn. He has given the world and U.S. premieres of many of Carter’s works, including A Mirror on Which to Dwell, Syringa, Tempo e Tempi, Trilogy for Oboe and Harp, Oboe Quartet, and A 6 Letter Letter.
Trained at The Juilliard School with teachers Lois Wann and Robert Bloom, Stephen is a member of its faculty as well as of the Yale School of Music, SUNY Purchase, SUNY Stony Brook, and the Manhattan School of Music. The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University awarded him a performer’s grant in 1981. Stephen collects and restores old wooden boats and plays on a rare Caldwell model Loree oboe.
