Stephen Hammer, oboe

Stephen Hammer enjoys an eclectic musical life playing and teaching oboes and recorders of all periods.

He is principal oboist of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, the Bach Ensemble, Concert Royal, Clarion Music Society, the Arcadia Players and the Aston Magna festival; he plays recorder with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, and serves as artistic director of the Blue Hill Bach Festival in Maine.

He has been a featured soloist with Great Performers at Lincoln Center and the Academy of Ancient Music and at many festivals and concert series. His more than 200 solo, chamber, obligato, and orchestral recordings appear on Decca l’Oiseau-lyre, EMI, Sony, CBS, Pro Arte, Dorian, Smithsonian, and many other labels.

He teaches oboe, chamber music, and performance practice at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has given courses in early woodwinds at Brandeis University and the rhetoric of Baroque performance at the Longy School of Music, and served on the faculties of Boston University, Indiana University, the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and the Brixen (Italy) Musik und Kirche academy; he also also collaborates with the instrument-maker Joel Robinson in building replicas of historical oboes.

Stephen Hammer lives in the town of Clermont, Columbia County, NY, in the beautiful Hudson Valley.