billy TRAYLOR / oboe
usicologist and early music specialist Billy Traylor, a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, holds degrees in oboe and bassoon performance from the University of New Orleans (BA 2001) and Northwestern State University of Louisiana (MM 2004), and was Adjunct Instructor of Bassoon and Early Music at the latter institution. His master’s document was entitled “Antoine Reicha’s Duo pour piano et basson: An Analysis and Urtext Performing Edition,” in which he presented a formal analysis and new performing edition taken directly from the composer’s original manuscript of this rarely performed Classical duo sonata for piano and bassoon. He has also pursued doctoral work in musicology and early music at Indiana University and the University of North Texas.
Mr. Traylor in 2003 was the founding music director of Collegium Musicum Novæ Aureliæ, Louisiana’s only actively performing orchestral ensemble for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, based in New Orleans. He is English hornist with the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra (Biloxi, MS) and has performed in on both period and modern oboes in orchestras and chamber ensembles in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Indiana. He has studied modern oboe with James Ryon (Louisiana State University) and Tony Smith (Northwestern State University), Baroque and Classical oboe with Washington McClain (Indiana University), and harpsichord/fortepiano with Elisabeth Wright (Indiana University).
His primary research interests include the history and development of the oboe and its repertoire, instrumental performance practice, the music of colonial New Orleans, musical life in the era of Louis XIV, the music and lives of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Antoine Reicha, and the folk music of Greece and the Aegean islands.