“In more than 2,000 Boston Pops performances of ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ a moment always arrived when Lois Schaefer was the star of the show,” writes Bryan Marquard in Sunday’s (2/10) Boston Globe. “She didn’t take her eyes off the musical score—not in her first concert, not in her 2,000th. She was determined to never make a mistake on her notoriously difficult instrument…. A groundbreaking musician who had been one of only four women in the BSO in the mid-1960s, Ms. Schaefer was 95 when she died … Jan. 31 in Sequim, Wash., where she lived in retirement with her older sister, a former cellist with the orchestra…. ‘To hear her in a Rossini overture is like watching the sunlight dance on rippling water,’ [Richard] Dyer wrote in 1990…. Lois Elizabeth Schaefer was born in Yakima, Wash., on March 10, 1924…. She studied at New England Conservatory with Georges Laurent, a former principal flutist with the BSO…. She performed with the Chicago Symphony and the New York City Opera…. In 1965, she was hired by the BSO, where she stayed until retiring as principal piccolo in 1990, also having been principal piccolo for the Pops.”
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