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A high school student once commented during her lesson, "You really like to teach, don't you?" "Of course," I replied. "Why do you ask?" She said that in her experience, most good musicians preferred playing to teaching, and that they were teaching only for financial reasons. I explained to her that I love teaching, I love performing, and I love having a busy career combining both. 

Over the past 30 years I've taught: 7-year-old recorder players; doctoral oboe students about to launch their own studios; elementary, middle school, and high school students; adult flutists who haven't touched their instrument in decades; professional oboists honing their skills; and adults who have never read or played a note of music before.

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Click on the image above to hear me play this 1720 oboe from the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I have given master classes and lectures at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Music School of Mexico, Boston Conservatory, Louisiana State University, University of Houston, Texas Tech University, and the Gene Byron Museum (Guanajuato, Mexico).  As the educational program coordinator of the Dallas Bach Society, I wrote, produced, and performed programs that brought historical music and dance into the public schools of Dallas.

 

The journey began at Boston Conservatory, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in oboe and music education, followed by master’s degrees in oboe and early music from New England Conservatory.  With the much-appreciated help of a grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Foundation, I moved to the Netherlands to study historical oboes at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.  On November 9, 1989 — yes, the day the Berlin Wall fell — I was on a train from Amsterdam to East Berlin.  After strolling through the Brandenburg Gate just hours after it opened (and being picked up by the Stasi for lacking the appropriate paperwork), I spent the next three months playing concerts in East Berlin while witnessing history, all while under the watchful eye of the Stasi. When my studies were completed, I returned to Boston, freelanced, worked on a doctorate at Boston University, and pondered my next adventure.  Quite unexpectedly, I ended up in Texas, teaching historical oboes at the University of North Texas while juggling a studio of 50 modern oboe students and playing concerts throughout the South and Mexico.  But after ten years, I missed the New England winters and the Boston accent.  I needed to pull up to a Dunkin' drive-through and order a lahge regulah. It was time to come home.  I currently live in the Boston area, performing and teaching (and drinking far too much Dunkin').

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Playing with Capella Guanajuatensis at the Gene Byron Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico (I'm on the far left.)

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© 2024 Joyce Alper All rights reserved

My studio is in Dedham, MA, convenient to Routes 1, 95, and 128.

There is ample on-street parking.


Please email for the location.

 

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