Oboe Master Teacher Elaine Douvas
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Elaine Douvas is principal oboe of the Metropolitan Opera, where she recently received her award for 30 years of service. Among her career highlights are performances of the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the MET Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, James Levine conducting, and Dutilleux’s Les Citations with the MET Chamber Ensemble. Her solo CD, containing works of Ravel, Schumann, Howells, Dutilleux, Goosens, and Roslavets, is issued by Boston Records. Her 2008 CD with oboist Emily Pailthorpe, entitled Oboe Divas, has just been released on the Oboe Classics label.
One of the best-known teachers in the US, Ms. Douvas has served as oboe instructor at The Juilliard School for twenty-five years and as Woodwind Department Chairman for the past ten. Her students hold important positions in more than a dozen major orchestras and university faculties. Never tired of playing and teaching, she has spent her summers as principal oboe and instructor at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1997, and teaches three intensive, one-week “oboe camps” in Quebec, Canada, and in the US at Interlochen, Michigan, and Carmel, California. Ms. Douvas has given master classes at The Curtis Institute of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Manhattan and Eastman schools of music, and the New World Symphony. Her three albums of demonstration and written commentary for Music Minus One are used by teachers and students across the country.
A native of Port Huron, Michigan, Ms Douvas trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music with John Mack and at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her previous positions include principal oboe of the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Shaw and summers at the Grand Teton, Marlboro, Angel Fire and Bravo!Colorado festivals. She makes her home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with her husband Robert Sirinek, orchestra manager and former trumpeter of the Met, their teenaged daughters, Portia and Margot, and Rusty, the Jack Russell Terrier. For many years she has devoted her spare time to figure skating and is proud to have earned her Gold Medal for Adult “Moves in the Field” in 2006.
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