Even Keel Photography for Wild Up
GRAMMY-nominated oboist Claire Chenette has been principal oboe with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra since 2014. Claire also performs in varied settings as a member of the Des Moines Metro Opera, Wildup, and Nief Norf; and has been a regular guest with the San Diego, Pacific, and Chattanooga Symphonies and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, among others. She is a regularly featured soloist with the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra, and has also performed concerti with the Breckenridge Music Festival and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. Claire is on faculty at the North Carolina Governor's School West, Nief Norf Summer Festival, and the Lucerne Festival Academy. As a recording artist, Claire appears on many film and TV scores and has credits as both performer and songwriter with her bands Bearcubes and Three Thirds. Her recording with Wildup, “The Pieces that Fall to the Earth,” was nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY award in the best chamber music/small ensemble performance category.
An advocate for new music, Claire holds a curatorial role as a Contemporary Leader with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra in Switzerland, producing, teaching, and performing at the Lucerne Festival Academy and Forward Festival. Claire has devoted herself to performing contemporary solo repertoire, including many memorized performances of Berio’s iconic Sequenza VII/Chemins IV, and to premiering new works for the oboe. She’s been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the New York Philharmonic’s Biennial, the Big Ears and Ojai Festivals; and at institutions such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, Disney Hall, and Salle Pleyel Paris.
She earned Bachelor's degrees in oboe and religion at Oberlin and an M.F.A. in performance from CalArts. Claire also plays folk music and is passionate about interdisciplinary projects that blur genres and subvert traditional expectations of what classical music is and who it is for. Recent projects include collaboratively scoring the experiential theater production STYX tours for Luzerner Theater, developing a lecture recital/live sauerkraut demo: Culture is a Verb: Exploring the connections between fermentation, social change, and artistic practice, and co-writing a space-rock musical about reproductive freedom on Planet Chattanooga.
An advocate for new music, Claire holds a curatorial role as a Contemporary Leader with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra in Switzerland, producing, teaching, and performing at the Lucerne Festival Academy and Forward Festival. Claire has devoted herself to performing contemporary solo repertoire, including many memorized performances of Berio’s iconic Sequenza VII/Chemins IV, and to premiering new works for the oboe. She’s been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the New York Philharmonic’s Biennial, the Big Ears and Ojai Festivals; and at institutions such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, Disney Hall, and Salle Pleyel Paris.
She earned Bachelor's degrees in oboe and religion at Oberlin and an M.F.A. in performance from CalArts. Claire also plays folk music and is passionate about interdisciplinary projects that blur genres and subvert traditional expectations of what classical music is and who it is for. Recent projects include collaboratively scoring the experiential theater production STYX tours for Luzerner Theater, developing a lecture recital/live sauerkraut demo: Culture is a Verb: Exploring the connections between fermentation, social change, and artistic practice, and co-writing a space-rock musical about reproductive freedom on Planet Chattanooga.
