Elaine Douvas

Elaine Douvas is an institution in the oboe world, having served forty-seven years as principal oboist of the Metropolitan Opera, as an oboe instructor at Juilliard and the Mannes School of Music since 1982, and as an artist-faculty member of the AMFS for thirty summers. She is always trying to answer the question “What constitutes a good, true education in music?” During the pandemic, she created the Hidden Valley Festival of Winds in Carmel Valley, a side-by-side intensive for eighteen outstanding wind players that is now in its sixth year. Douvas is one of the founders of Wind Orchestra at Juilliard, and has conducted them annually for ten years. Ms. Douvas has played in hundreds of broadcasts, recordings, and concerts with the Met, including the Strauss Oboe Concerto in Carnegie Hall. Douvas’s CDs comprise a solo recital for Boston Records, Pleasure is the Law by her quartet of the same name, and Oboe Divas on the Oboe Classics label. Douvas trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her first job was principal oboe of the Atlanta Symphony at the age of twenty-one. For many years she devoted her spare time to figure skating and has passed eleven official U.S. Figure Skating tests.