About Jane
Jane Murray holds the solo English horn chair with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, a position she has held since 1978. Her many solos have been hailed in the press as "elegant", "haunting", "wistful", "beguiling", "spellbinding" and "scrumptious"!
Long a champion of oboe d'amore and English horn, she has premiered several new works for the deeper oboes and was recipient in 2012 of a RI State Council for the Arts Grant for a series of concerts of music for English horn and organ performed in several of the area’s magnificent churches.
She also is an accomplished oboist, and performs regularly with several New England area orchestras and choruses, in the pit for Broadway shows, with the Hilltop Trio, and with the wind quintet Northeast Chamber Ensemble, who were the recipients of a Continental Harmony Grant from the NEA, resulting in a series of concerts in collaboration with Gospel choirs on both coasts.
She is a devoted pedagogue, training oboists of all ages, and is on the faculty of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School, St Georges School, Salve Regina University and the University of Rhode Island, where she teaches Oboe and Somatics: Movement Training for Musicians. She has served on the faculty of the Vermont Youth Orchestras Summer program, and was the artistic director of the Northeast Quintet Camp.
She has performed as soloist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Ocean State Chamber Orchestra, Fall River Symphony and “Concerts on the Island" Chamber Orchestras, and was the featured oboist at the Newport Music Festival from 1993-2003. She also appeared at the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in 1995, 2008, and 2018, and at Vermont's Reveille Festival from 2011-2014.
She has performed much of the solo repertoire for English horn and orchestra including Copland's Quiet City (with trumpet virtuoso Rolf Smedvig), Sibelius' Swan of Tuonela, Reicha's Recitative and Rondo, Vaughn Williams' Folksong Variations and Donizetti's Concertino, as well as Bach's Concerto for Oboe D'amore and Orchestra.
Since 2004, she has been a licensed Andover Educator, teaching Body Mapping for musicians: a somatic awareness curriculum which can help musicians of all ages retrain their movement to allow them to play without pain and avoid injury. In addition to giving individual sessions in her home studio, she is in demand as a clinician and has presented classes and workshops at UMass Amherst, SUNY Purchase, Providence College, Boston Woodwind Society, and for the International Double Reed Society 2016 Conference in Columbus, GA. She teaches the course for music majors at Rhode Island College and URI.
She shares a 3 acre spread in Jamestown, Rhode Island with her husband,
wood artist Doug Brill, and their 2 dogs and 2 cats
Body Mapping
Jane Murray has studied and practiced Body Mapping for over ten years, after seeking a solution to years of pain from playing English horn. With the unique perspective of 15 years of experience as a gymnastics coach, she understands anatomy and body mechanics, and uses that knowledge to apply the principals of Body Mapping for musicians of all genres.