James Roe closes oboe career with MI concert
Earlier this month, NJSO President & CEO James Roe performed Mozart’s Oboe Concerto and Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra (TSO) in Michigan. For Roe, it was a homecoming that also brought his robust, decades-long career as a professional oboist full circle.
Roe, a Traverse City native, began his performing career with the TSO in the 1980s, when the orchestra was called the Northwestern Michigan Symphony Orchestra. “I remember my first concert with the orchestra so clearly,” he says. “I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to be playing in a professional orchestra as a teenager—it was a dream come true.”
This month’s performance with the TSO was Roe’s personal finale as a professional musician. After serving as NJSO Acting Principal Oboe for two years, Roe transitioned from his performing career to a full-time administrative one when he was appointed NJSO President & CEO last June.
But at the time he assumed his leadership position of the NJSO, this TSO solo performance was already on his calendar. “I wanted to keep this engagement, and [NJSO Board of Trustees Co-Chairs Ruth Lipper and Stephen Sichak Jr.] fully supported me,” he said. “It was a great pleasure to go back to Traverse City.”
And it was indeed a homecoming. “My very first music teacher plays in the [TSO] second violin section, and the conductor was a chum of mine at undergraduate school,” Roe says. “My junior-high band director, with whom I started playing oboe in eighth grade, plays first oboe and soloed with me in Handel’s Entrance of the Queen of Sheba for two oboes and strings—it was a thrill for us to play together. There were many people I knew both in the orchestra and the audience. I felt at home and very happy to be sharing this piece with everyone.
“I didn’t really focus on the fact that it was my last [professional oboe engagement], but I felt that gave me license to be as free and expressive as I could possibly be. I focused on bringing Mozart to life in the best way that I could.”
Roe found a way to make the evening even more memorable for his hometown orchestra and audience. “[The TSO] is in the middle of a very important three-year challenge grant that matches $50,000 of new donations each year. When [my onstage interview with the conductor] was ending, I mentioned the challenge and said I was going to donate my artist’s fee back to the symphony to help them meet the challenge for this season. The audience exploded, and the conductor stood up and gave me a big hug. It was wonderful to be able to help out—and it was really fun to do it in that way!”
Onstage and off, it was a fitting place for Roe’s performing finale. “Because I was hired for this concerto before the NJSO’s CEO search, the idea that I would be coming full circle in my career was not yet in place,” he says. “But once the search happened and I had this change in my life, I was happy to be able to [cap my performing career] in this way—it was very meaningful.”
Learn more about the NJSO’s President & CEO.
Pictured (top to bottom): James Roe on stage with Traverse Symphony Orchestra Music Director Kevin Rhodes. Roe with TSO Principal Oboe Lynn Hansen—Roe’s junior-high band director.