Oregon Arts Watch: Choose your own adventure: Oboist Ben Price talks about their life at the Curtis Institute of Music

Oregon Arts Watch
By James Bash

Discussing American and European oboe styles, musical studies, dry halls and the Curtis Sound with the Portland-raised musician.

Ben Price, age 19, is an oboist in their second year of studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where they hold the Anderson and Daria Pew Fellowship at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. Price performs as a member of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and as a soloist and chamber musician in the Curtis Student Recital Series.

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Oregon ArtsWatch: What led you to playing the oboe?

Ben Price: I had a couple of false starts. I played violin for about five minutes when I was three, but I was more interested in the keychain around my violin teacher’s neck than the violin. I started playing piano when I was five, but the practicing aspect of that turned me off initially. Then I really started studying piano when I was eight. I studied piano with oboe for nine or ten years. We all take piano lessons here at Curtis once a week as well. So, I still study piano, but it became clear pretty early on that oboe would become my primary instrument, especially after I heard a recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Scheherazade. That really got to me.

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