Johanna Cox Pennington joined the faculty at Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music as Professor of Oboe in the Fall of 2023. Her teaching career spans two decades including tenured positions at Louisiana State University and the University of Oklahoma School of Music.

Pennington performed her Carnegie Hall solo debut in October of 2005, of which the New York Concert Review stated, “…a solid recital of high standard, excellent musicianship, and a sense of taste and proportion.” In her hometown of Rochester, NY, she won her first concerto competition at age 17 and performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Her early recordings on the Albany Record label include two full length chamber music CD’s: “Gail Force” with the Prairie Winds Quintet and “American Breeze” with the Musical Arts Quintet funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. She released her first solo CD with Albany Records, “Orion Nocturne, World Premiere Music for Oboe and English Horn,” in 2018. The CD includes five new works she commissioned including Grammy award winning composer, Kenneth Fuchs’s “Orion Nocturne,” and Miguel del Aguila’s “Broken Rondo” concerto for English horn featuring the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Pennington has performed as a guest artist with several notable orchestras including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chicago Symphony and will perform with the Cleveland Orchestra for upcoming concerts in 2024. She is a frequent soloist at the International Double Reed Society Conference (IDRS) and has given three acclaimed performances at Carnegie Hall. In addition to regular performances with the Baton Rouge Symphony and Louisiana Philharmonic, she won orchestra positions with the Tulsa Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Northwest Indiana Symphony and Breckenridge Music Festival. She has taught oboe clinics, given master classes, and performed concertos and recitals at major universities, both domestic and international, taking her in recent years to Brazil, China, Italy, Germany, England, Spain, France, Romania and Greece.

Her teachers include Richard Killmer at the Eastman School of Music, Alex Klein at Northwestern University and Heinz Holliger at the Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiberg, Germany.