Elizabeth Raum is active both as an oboist and as a composer. A native of Boston Massachussetts, she earned her Bachelor of Music in oboe performance from the Eastman School of Music in 1966 with Robert Sprenkle,and her Master of Music in composition from the University of Regina in 1985 with Thomas Schudel. She currently plays principal oboe with the Regina Symphony Orchestra in Regina, Saskatchewan.
She has been featured in many publications including Opera Canada, the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, the Tuba Journal, the New Grove’s Dictionary of Opera, the New Grove’s Dictionary of Women Composers, and will be included in the upcoming New Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Whenever possible, she will listen to, and even watch an individual performer before she begins to write for them. Often, these sounds and images combine to become the impetus for her creative process, which one can hear in the results. Her music always provides scope for the full expressive range of any given instrument, which is as gratifying to the performers as it is to the public.
Early in her career, Elizabeth experimented with many systems and styles of composition. Finding an artistic voice can be a confounding task for many young composers. For Raum, the question which began as “what” or “how”, became “why, to what end do I raise my voice?” The answer was finally very simple: to write the music she would like to hear, music that moves and elevates the spirit.
