Dr. Heather Macdonald
Visiting Assistant Professor of Oboe
Praised for her “intimate and evocative” playing (The WholeNote), Canadian oboist Dr. Heather Macdonald is internationally sought after as an orchestral and chamber musician. She has performed with ensembles across North America including the Colorado Symphony, Boulder Philharmonic, Cheyenne Symphony, Soundstreams, Niagara Symphony, Windsor Symphony, Ontario Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, Wheeling Symphony, Bermuda Chamber Choir, and many more. As a soloist, she regularly commissions and premieres new works for oboe, with previous projects funded by grants from the International Double Reed Society (IDRS)’s 50 for 50 Project and Ontario Arts Council, and premiered at SoundSCAPE Festival and the IDRS Symposium. Her solo debut album, That Place, Darling (2024), features several of these new commissions as well as fresh takes on classics.
A passionate advocate for musicians’ wellness, Heather has published her musicians’ health research in Frontiers in Psychology and International Journal of Music Education and presented at the Performing Arts Medicine Association, International Symposium on Performance Science, and Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare conferences. Heather holds degrees from the University of Toronto, University of Colorado, Glenn Gould School, and the University of Ottawa. Before relocating to the United States, she was on faculty teaching oboe at McMaster University in Canada.
This fall, Dr. Heather Macdonald will join the Greenwood School of Music as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Oboe.