Oboe
2022
Melinda Maxwell has performed worldwide as soloist in Europe, Japan, Africa, the USA and nationally in the UK. She is also a recitalist, chamber musician, composer, improviser and teacher. She is Principal Oboist of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and has played as guest principal and sub-principal with the London Sinfonietta for over thirty years.
Many pieces have been written for her including those by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Simon Holt and Howard Skempton. Her own septet Fractures received its premiere in a performance by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in 2016 conducted by the late Oliver Knussen.
She has recorded frequently for the BBC and her own recordings have been critically acclaimed and voted CD of the month in the BBC Music magazine and the Guardian. Her most recent CD Blue Bamboo: jazz and other improvisations was released in 2016 by Oboe Classics.
As a teacher she has taught at the RAM, Trinity College of Music, and the RNCM (Head of Woodwind and Consultant in Woodwind Studies). She is the Oboe Tutor at the NYO and coaches at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Snape, Suffolk.
In 2013 she gained an MMus in Jazz Performance at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and in 2016 began a PhD in Improvisation, Performance and Composition.
Part of her PhD studies involves opening up the idea of oboe character and how this can influence a musical language. So far, she has learnt the Nadaswaram, an Indian oboe, and has begun research into the ancient Greek aulos.