Kelly McElrath Vaneman

Oboist Kelly McElrath Vaneman is Associate Professor of oboe and musicology and chair of the Department of Musicology and Composition at the Carroll McDaniel Petrie School of Music of Converse College. She holds DMA, MMA and MM degrees from the Yale University School of Music, where she was teaching assistant to Ronald Roseman. A native Texan, she received her BMus summa cum laude from Baylor University, where she studied with Doris DeLoach. In addition, she studied modern and Baroque oboe with Paul Dombrecht at the Koninklijk Konservatorium Brussel under a grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Dr. Vaneman is, above all, committed to chamber music and the expansion of its repertoire. As oboist of the oboe/flute/piano trio Ensemble Radieuse she has performed on three continents, premiered countless new works and arrangements, and recorded the CD Inbox.  In addition to her work with Ensemble Radieuse, Dr. Vaneman has pursued her love of chamber music as an Artist-Fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Bach Aria Festival, as oboist of the chamber ensembles BYNA and Conversant, and was founder and director of Chamber Music in the Chapel in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

As a soloist, Dr. Vaneman has been active in the new music scene and has over thirty premieres to her credit. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Guatemala, Texas, and South Carolina and has played as a member of the Central Texas, Waco, Asheville, Spartanburg and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, the National Orchestral Institute, the American Wind Symphonyand the Reigate Festival Orchestra of Surrey, England.

A musician of wide-ranging interests, Dr. Vaneman has performed Baroque music on period instruments and directs and performs with the Converse Early Music Ensemble. She has also performed and recorded as a member of the New York-based rock bands Rome 56 and the Ashley Wilkes Band. She is a past president of the Rho chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda and a member of Alpha Chi and has written for The Double Reed, the journal of the International Double Reed Society. She spends her summers in residence at the Performing Arts Institute of Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania, where she performs with the PAI Symphony and teaches oboe and chamber music.

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