Andrea Ridilla

Education

M.M. Performance, The Juilliard School
B.M. Performance, Oberlin Conservatory of Music

Biography

Andrea Ridilla is a Professor of Music at Miami University. She holds both a Master and Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She is Principal Oboe of the Classical Music Festival in Austria each summer and held the same position with the Festival International Echternach in Luxembourg from 1991-2007. She is Principal Oboe of the Mason Symphony Orchestra and the Southwestern Ohio Philharmonic (SWOP) Orchestra, and was Principal Oboe of the Middletown Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Carmon DeLeone from 1990-2016.

Her solo CD, L’Amore Italiano (Kleos/Helicon, 2009) with the Sofia Philharmonic in Bulgaria under Maestro Ricardo Averbach, was critically acclaimed. Fanfare Magazine writes, “Ridilla plays with exceptional control and a beautiful tone.” The American Record Guide calls her playing, “…heartfelt and expressive.” She is a co-inventor of the U.S. patented Ridilla model oboe gouging machine, which was manufactured by Reeds ‘n Stuff in Germany.

As invited guest of the U.S. State Department, Andrea traveled twice to Vladivostok, Russia (2012, 2014) to teach and perform as a soloist with the Vladivostok Symphony under Maestro Vadim Vilinov. She has been a guest professor at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music and the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. Most recently, she performed two world premieres at the International Double Reed Society Conference in Granada, Spain (2018). In 2017, she appeared as a soloist at the Musica no Museu Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a concerto soloist with the Orquesta da Cámara Quito in Ecuador, El Universo (Guayaquil) writes “…Ridilla sparkled with intonation, expression and phrasing…”

She was a guest professor at the 3rd Encuentro of the Asociación de Doble Caña in Seville, Spain. She has been a concerto soloist with the Festival Echternach in Luxembourg, at the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, the Moselle Music Festival in Germany, the Classical Music Festival in Austria, the Westmoreland Symphony and with the Ashland Symphony under Maestro Arie Lipsky. She performed with Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, California and has performed solo recitals throughout Italy including Rome, Florence, Turin and Pisa. As top prize winner for winds at the Munich Prelims of the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, she was one of six international finalists invited to Rome.

She was awarded fellowship to Tanglewood, Yale at Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. Prior to her appointment at Miami University, she was Principal Oboe of the Las Vegas Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the National Orchestra of New York (NOA). She was on the faculties of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the New York State Summer School of the Arts at Saratoga. Her primary teachers were Robert and Sara Bloom, Louis Rosenblatt, Allan Vogel, and James Caldwell. She studied reedmaking and gouging with Joseph Robinson and took perfection classes with Hansjörg Schellenberger (Germany), and Maurice Bourgue (Paris). Intensely devoted to teaching, she won Miami University’s 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award. Her students have earned tenured positions in universities, and scholarships to prestigious graduate programs. Her high school students have won positions in the Cincinnati and Dayton Youth Symphonies, District and Regional bands and orchestras, and Ohio All-State Orchestra. Her online textbook on opera appreciation, Opera: Passport to the Liberal Arts, was published in 2022 by Kendall-Hunt Publishing Co. Andrea is an F. Lorée-Paris performing artist.