In Sunday’s (8/21) Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Zachary Lewis writes, “A career in music was never Elizabeth Camus’s number one goal. Growing up and all through school, the oboist viewed music as a serious hobby, a fallback from her first love, science. Yet now here she is, about to retire from the Cleveland Orchestra, looking back on over three decades in one of the world’s top ensembles and a musical career any artist would envy. … That Camus is going out on top is undeniable. She herself may be detecting subtle imperfections in her playing, but her colleagues—who’ll be working with substitutes until after auditions in October—still regard her as an anchor of her section. … Oboe entered her life almost by chance, at age 10, when she took it up at the request of a band teacher. Later, in another fortuitous turn, she studied with John Mack, the future principal oboist in Cleveland then serving the New Orleans Symphony. At age 19, Camus followed Mack to Northeast Ohio and CIM … Then fate again intervened, whisking Camus off to positions in the San Antonio and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Eventually she found her way back to Cleveland, landing her current job in 1979, at age 30.”
Posted August 23, 2011
