Associate Professor
Oboe, Oboe d'amore, English Horn
School of Music
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-2504
P: 225.578.2589
F: 225.578.2562
E: jryon@lsu.edu

James Ryon (Associate Professor of Oboe) has appeared as recitalist and soloist in the United States, South America and the Middle East. He is currently the Principal Oboist of the Baton Rouge Symphony as well as Associate Professor of Oboe at the Louisiana State University School of Music, where he is a member of the Burle Marx Trio and the Timm Wind Quintet. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in music from the Juilliard School and has received performance fellowships at the Aspen, Berkshire, Blossom, Kneisel Hall and New College Music Festivals. His principal teachers are Robert Bloom and John Mack.

Ryon has also served as Principal Oboist with the Akron Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Orchestra Estadual de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. For 19 years he was a Professor of Music at the University of Akron, and also a member the Solaris Quintet. He has also taught at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, the University of South Florida, where he was a member of the Ars Nova Quintet, and the Caracas Philharmonic Conservatory, where he was Director of "Musica en las Escuelas," a musical outreach program.

Ryon's interest and research in Brazilian music has led him to organize BrazilFest '91 at the University of Akron, perform twice at the Biennial Festival of Contemporary Brazilian Music in Rio de Janeiro, and help establish the Burle Marx Brazilian Music Collection at the University of Akron's Bierce Library. In March of 2000 he commissioned and premiered João Guilherme Ripper's Abertura Concertante for Oboe, English Horn and Orchestra with the Akron Symphony. Ryon's CD of 20th Century Brazilian Chamber Music for Oboe, Cello and Piano with the Burle Marx Trio has been released by Jeanné Digital. His two recordings with Solaris may be found on Capstone Records.

With a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts in 2005, Ryon and the Burle Marx Trio inaugurated the Pelican State Chamber Music Series, a series of 12 concerts in New Roads and Baton Rouge, LA. Ryon's wide-ranging musical experience has included tours and concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cleveland Opera, the Cleveland Ballet, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Ohio Ballet, the Canton Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Bach Aria Group and the British rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Prof. Ryon also holds a degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University.

More information about Ryon and the oboe studio at LSU may be found at: http://www.music.lsu.edu/~jryon