
MUSIC
Elena Sloman is an oboe and English horn player in Northern California. She has performed with the Stockton Symphony, Symphony Napa Valley, Merced Symphony, Symphony of the Redwoods, the USAF Band of the Golden West, Santa Rosa Symphony Pops, Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, American Youth Symphony (Los Angeles), Sonoma County Philharmonic, and various ensembles at the Eastman School of Music and the USC Thornton School of Music including orchestra, new music, baroque, chamber, opera orchestra, musical theater, and wind ensembles.
Comfortable with performing music from every era, she has premiered student composition works at USC and Eastman, appeared as a soloist with the Community Women's Orchestra of Oakland, and played on recording projects with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Eastman Chamber Orchestra featuring guitarist Nick Goluses, and the Marin Youth Orchestra at Skywalker Sound. She was introduced to baroque oboe by Lot Demeyer at USC, and studied further on a period instrument at Eastman with Geoffrey Burgess.
Elena has attended summer festivals such as Festival Napa Valley Blackburn Academy, CA; Music House International, Philadelphia PA; Madeline Island Chamber Music, WI; Domaine Forget, Quebec, Canada; Hot Springs Music Festival, AR; and PRISMA, Powell River, Canada.
Elena received her Master of Music degree in Oboe Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music in 2017. She graduated summa cum laude in 2015 from the USC Thornton School of Music with a Bachelor of Music degree in Oboe Performance under a faculty scholarship. She has been inducted into USC Golden Key International, Pi Kappa Lambda, and Phi Kappa Phi honors societies, and honored with the USC Winds and Percussion Departmental award. Her primary teachers have been Richard Killmer, Joel Timm, and Daniel Celidore, and she has performed in masterclasses for Nancy Ambrose King, Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, Olivier Doise, Lucas Navarro, Pedro Diaz, Marion Kuszyk, Ariana Ghez, and the late David Weiss.
Oboe & English Horn

photo: Holly Hu
photo: Holly Hu
Private Music Lessons & Teaching
Elena is available for private music lessons for oboe, English horn, and recorder. Please contact with inquiries on availability and lesson fees!
She has classroom teaching experience and has coached woodwind sectionals for the Santa Rosa Youth Ensembles and the Napa Youth Symphony Ensembles. She is a member of the Napa Valley Performing Arts Center's Artists in Residence program, through which she has brought early childhood music classes to preschool and kindergarten classes throughout the Napa Valley. In 2019 Elena was a co-presenter bringing symphonic music to elementary school students with the Berkeley Symphony's educational concert series.
Outside of music teaching, Elena also co-leads a Fall sailing and camping trip for high school students through Summerfield Waldorf High School.
Strong leadership skills combined with her musical knowledge has led Elena to the conductor's podium. Elena has served as the assistant conductor to the Community Women's Orchestra of Oakland from 2018-2020. She is a substitute conductor for the Santa Rosa Symphony Debut and Aspirante Youth Orchestras (level 1 and 2), and acted as the interim conductor for the Debut Youth Orchestra in spring of 2019.
Conducting

Arts Administration
As an oboe player, planning and organizing is a large part of the musical process, and this has translated well into Elena's arts administration work. She has worked on staff at music education programs such as Santa Rosa Symphony's Simply Strings and summer programs like Festival Napa Valley's Blackburn Music Academy, where she participated as an orchestra member in 2018 before being brought onboard to work on the staff team the following season. From 2020 to 2021, Elena was selected to fulfill the role of operations manager for the Mill Valley Philharmonic in Marin County, CA. Elena is currently the youth ensembles manager at the Santa Rosa Symphony, running operations for four youth orchestras as well as assisting with the other SRS education programs.

Bernstein Centennial: West Side Story (Photographer: Paul E. Richardson)

Concertos at Castello di Amorosa - Zoltán Fejérvári performs (Photographer: Paul E. Richardson)



Photo: Vicky Shin

Benjamin Britten - Turn of the Screw


Photo: Jeff Williams

Photo: Rosalie Abbott

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels pit orchestra

Igor Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms Photo: Drew Mikuska