Barbara Bishop, Associate Principal
B.M. Eastman School of Music
M.M. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Member of the Orchestra Since 2000

Barbara Bishop plays Associate Principal Oboe with the Kansas City Symphony and is Assistant Professor of Oboe at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. She received a Bachelor of Music degree and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School and a Master of Music degree from the University of Minnesota. Her summers are spent playing orchestral and chamber music in Jackson, Wyoming with the Grand Teton Music Festival. She is also a regular Guest Principal with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and was a soloist in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1 on their Chicago tour last April.

Bishop played on three recordings released this year—a recording of Naudot Trio Sonatas with Margaret Marco at the University of Kansas; A New Era, celebrating the inaugural season of Donald Runnicles as Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival; and the Gordon Chin Double Concerto with Cho-Liang Lin, Felix Fan, Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony on the Naxos label. She also played on a Wyoming Public Television documentary and numerous Performance Today broadcasts on National Public Radio. An active soloist, she has performed four concerti with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra this season including a performance of the Strauss Oboe concerto. This fall, she will be playing recitals at the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music.

She has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas and the University of Montana and has given master classes across the country including an orchestral audition class at the Aspen Music Festival. Her students have gone on to attend institutions such as the Eastman School, Cleveland Institute, New England Conservatory, Temple, Northwestern University, the Banff Centre, and Mannes; and have won positions in professional orchestras such as the New Mexico Symphony, the Toledo Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the National Symphony and the New World Symphony.

Bishop has been a soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra and with members of the Summit Brass. She has recorded on the Sony Classical and Newport Classics labels, played in the semi-final round of the Munich International Competition with the Wilson Wind Quintet, and served as Principal Oboist with the Baton Rouge Symphony, Alexander Schneider's New York String Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.