Robert Bloom (May 3, 1908 – February 13, 1994) was anoboist with an orchestral and solo career, acomposer and arranger contributing to the oboerepertory, and a teacher of several successful oboists.^[1] Bloom is considered seminal in the development of an American school of oboe playing.^[2]

At theCurtis Institute of Music Bloom was a pupil ofMarcel Tabuteau for three years.^[2] In the 1930s he playedEnglish horn in thePhiladelphia Orchestra underLeopold Stokowski and first oboe in theRochester Philharmonic underJosé Iturbi.^[2] He was the principal oboe inArturo Toscanini'sNBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1943.^[3] Bloom plays on recordings by theColumbia Symphony and theRCA Symphony.^[2]

In 1946 Bloom was one of the founding members of theBach Aria Group, with which he played until 1980.^[1][2] Recordings by the Bach Aria Group featuring Bloom started appearing from the late 1940s.^[4] Bloom transcribed and elaborated 18th-century masterworks for the oboe.^[5] His own compositions include aSonatina for oboe and piano.^[1]

Bloom was aprofessor atYale andJuilliard.^[1] His pupils includeWilliam Bennett,^[6]Bill Douglas,^[7] Tim Hurtz,^[8] Richard Killmer,^[9] Bert Lucarelli,^[10]Ray Still,^[10][11]Allan Vogel,^[10] andRichard Woodhams,^[2] In the spring of 1988, friends, colleagues, and former pupils gathered inLincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall inNew York for an 80th-birthday tribute.^[2]

A few years after Bloom's death in 1994,^[12] his widow, Sara Lambert Bloom, publishedThe Robert Bloom Collection, scores and parts to his 21 editions of 18th-century masterworks, 10 transcriptions, and 10 compositions.^[13]The Art of Robert Bloom, a 7-CD set of live performances of concertos, chamber music, and Bach arias performed by Bloom over his 60-year career was released in 2001 on Boston Records label.^[14]

Bloom's daughter,Kath Bloom is a singer-songwriter and music therapist based in Litchfield, CT.^[15]

• Bloom, Sara Lambert. "A Tribute to Robert Bloom".Double Reed, Volume 11, Number 3 (1988): 11–21.
• Bloom, Sara Lambert (editor), with contributions and/or quotations fromJulius Baker, Samuel Baron, Robert Bloom, Susan Eischeid, Jerome Hoberman,David McGill,Leopold Stokowski, Robert Stumpf II, Daniel Webster and others.Robert Bloom: The Story of a Working Musician.rdg, 2009. (Addenda and errata: 2012)ISBN 9781934866115OCLC 429118667
• Burgess, Geoffrey. "Bloom, Robert" inThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan Publishers. Second edition, 2001.
• Burgess, Geoffrey. "Bloom, Robert" inThe Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition, eight volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.ISBN 978-0-19-531428-1.
• Galbraith, Amy M.The American School of Oboe Playing: Robert Bloom, John de Lancie, John Mack, and the Influence of Marcel Tabuteau.West Virginia University, 2011.ISBN 9781124894478
• Schwartz, Norman."The Pavarotti of the Oboe: Robert Bloom" inThe Double Reed, Volume 28 Number 1 (2005).
• Woodhams, Richard. "Robert Bloom, Eminent American Oboist." inThe Instrumentalist, Volume 44, Number 4 (December 1989): 24–30.

• Official website

• American classical oboists
• American male oboists
• Cor anglais players
• Musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra
• Players of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra
• Composers for oboe
• 20th-century American classical composers
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• 1908 births
• 1994 deaths
• Musicians from Pittsburgh
• Curtis Institute of Music alumni
• 20th-century American male composers

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