Short:
Gabrielle Castriotta received both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University, majoring in Comparative Literary Studies for the former and Oboe Performance for the latter. She also earned Master of Music degree from the University of Southern California. Gabrielle has occupied the English horn positions of both the Debut Orchestra and the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles and currently holds a Teaching Artist position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Summer festival participation includes Bowdoin, Domaine Forget, the Sarasota Music Festival, Master Classes for Winds and Strings at the Banff Centre, and a tour of South America with Youth Orchestra of the Americas. She has also performed as a guest artist at Music Academy of the West. As a professional oboist in Los Angeles, she has performed with various ensembles and orchestras including WildUp Modern Music Collective, the Jacaranda Music Festival, and the West Los Angeles Symphony, as well as studio recording. Also active as a teacher, Gabrielle has been the oboe coach for the Idyllwild Arts Orchestra and the oboe teaching assistant for Idyllwild Arts Summer Program, in addition to maintaining a private oboe studio. Currently, she is the oboe instructor at CalPoly San Luis Obispo. Principal teachers include Allan Vogel, Scott Hostetler, and Carolyn Hove. Gabrielle also teaches at Crossroads School in Santa Monica, CA.
Long:
Gabrielle Castriotta was born in Hartford, CT but moved to Houston, TX at the age of 12. There, she attended St. John's School, learned violin and cello, and studied oboe with Linda Gilbert. Gabrielle played oboe in the Houston Youth Symphony, Virtuosi of Houston, and Rice University's Campanile Orchestra, as well as violin and cello in St. John's School's Chamber Strings. She was a semifinalist in 2000 and 2001 for the Houston Symphony League Concerto Competition and was a founding member of the Houston Symphony's Teen Council, where she completed an internship in the public relations department.
Gabrielle attended Northwestern University where she studied with Scott Hostetler (English horn, Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and Michael Henoch (Assistant Principal Oboe, Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Gabrielle also took English horn lessons with Grover Schiltz, former English horn for the Chicago Symphony, and participated in master classes with Ray Still, former principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony, while at Northwestern. In addition to a Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance, Gabrielle also received a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern. She studied Italian at the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy during the summer of 2003, and she wrote her senior thesis on the interaction between the text of the Finnish epic, The Kalevala, and the music of Jean Sibelius's early symphonic work, Kullervo.
While at Northwestern, Gabrielle also participated in the Partnerships Through the Arts (PTA) program, which joined various Chicago performing arts groups to the Chicago public school system through students at Northwestern University. The program asserted that arts education, in addition to enriching children's lives, helped students learn better in general. The Chicago Chamber Musicians performed at an elementary school once a month and provided a teaching artist to teach basic music classes to the students. Together with another Northwestern intern, Gabrielle helped the teaching artist and introduced instruments, composers, and musical terms to classes of 4th-graders and kindergarteners, and worked with an after-school recorder class.
After graduating from Northwestern, Gabrielle continued her oboe studies with Allan Vogel at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, where she received her Master of Music in Oboe Performance in May 2008. While at USC, Gabrielle participated in the Thornton School's Outreach Program, where she taught clarinet sectionals at a local high school and introduced the oboe to local elementary school classrooms. Gabrielle held the English horn position in the Young Musician's Foundation Debut Orchestra for four years.
Gabrielle participated in Music Academy of the West in 2010 as a guest artist, as well as the the 2009 Banff Centre Master Classes for Winds, the 2008 Sarasota Music Festival, the Youth Orchestra of the America's 2005 tour of South America, where she was coached by Alex Klein, as well as Domaine Forget and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival. She has appeared as a soloist with the North Shore Chamber Orchestra in Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante, and has participated in master classes with Nicholas Daniel, Stephen Taylor, Ariana Ghez, Bert Lucarelli, Thomas Stacy, Elaine Douvas, Ted Baskin, David Weiss, and Joel Timm. Gabrielle has also studied English horn with Carolyn Hove.
Currently, Gabrielle is active as a performer and teacher in the Los Angeles Area, serving as a Teaching Artist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and on faculty as oboe lecturer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She maintains a private oboe studio and also teaches middle school wind ensemble at Crossroads School in Santa Monica. Gabrielle as performed with WildUp, Symbiosis, the Midnight Winds, and in various local orchestras, as well as in film scores. She has worked as an oboe coach at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, and she works as the mentor coordinator of the St. Anne's School music project between Crossroads and St. Anne's School. For this project, she oversees the Crossroads upper school string students as they mentor the St. Anne's school elementary school string students.
