“Leslie Elena Starr, who played the oboe with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and was a dedicated birder who loved the outdoors, died of a heart attack Feb. 12 at her home in Mount Washington. She was 70,” writes Jacques Kelly in Thursday’s (2/25) Baltimore Sun. “Raised in Annapolis, she was a 1968 graduate of Annapolis High School, where she played the oboe. She earned a degree at St. John’s College.… She … enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory and earned a Bachelor of Music degree. She often performed Renaissance and Baroque music on period woodwind instruments…. Ms. Starr taught oboe at Goucher College and the Baltimore School for the Arts, where her students included Katherine Needleman, now principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony…. She performed with Pro Musica Rara in Baltimore, Bach in Baltimore and the South Florida Symphony. Ms. Starr was principal oboist of the Delaware Symphony, co-principal oboist of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, and a long-term substitute performer with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra…. ‘She never slowed down,’ … said her husband, Joseph Turner, retired Baltimore Symphony Orchestra principal oboe. ‘She delved further into playing the harpsichord and learning Spanish in her 60s. A week before her death, she started singing lessons.’ ” Survivors include her husband, a brother, and two stepsons.
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