The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is mourning the death on Aug. 13 of oboist Joan Champie (née Shallin), the first woman to join the orchestra’s winds section from 1955 to 1962. She was 92.
According to the Baltimore Symphony Musicians, Champie’s oboe instructor Marcel Tabuteau attempted to dissuade her from a career in the orchestra. “I don’t want to waste [Philadelphia conservatory] Curtis’ money on a woman,” he told her and said she should “study something where she could get employed as a woman ‘like ballet.'”
Champie’s obituary describes her trailblazing, multifaceted life, including that she played with the Santa Fe Opera, learned to speak Russian, received a master’s degree in deaf education, cared for men living with AIDS in the 1980s, and even earned her pilot’s license.
