Originally from Naperville, Illinois, oboist Nora Anderson Lewis enjoys a varied performance career and has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, with Alarm Will Sound, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Classical Orchestra, Wichita Symphony Orchestra, New Hampshire Symphony, Camerata Chicago, and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). She was a founding member of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente and held orchestral positions with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra and the Plymouth Philharmonic. She has performed in recital at St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London, on the Cranbrook Music Guild artist series, Hale Library concert series, and in live recital broadcasts on Blue Lake Public Radio, WMUK Kalamazoo’s “In Concert,” and “Live from Studio B” at WFMT in Chicago.

Nora has presented clinics, performances, and papers at national and international conferences including the Midwest Clinic, International Double Reed Society, Society of Composers Inc., College Music Society, CBDNA (southwest region), ClarinetFest, and National Flute Association in locations such as Finland, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. Honors include a Big-12 Faculty Fellowship, honorary membership in Sigma Alpha Iota as a National Arts Associate, Pi Kappa Lambda, and a Yale AlumniVentures Grant. For ten summers Lewis taught at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. She has served on the CMS National Advisory Board for performance, as editor for the Midwest Double Reed Society, and is consulting editor for The Instrumentalist magazine.

With clarinetist Phillip O. Paglialonga and bassoonist Eric Van der Veer Varner, Nora was a founding member of the PEN Trio, a chamber ensemble passionate about performance, education, and scholarship. From 2010-2019 the ensemble commissioned, premiered, and promoted numerous new works and gave concerts, master classes, and entrepreneurial workshops throughout the United States as well as in Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Panama, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom.

Summit Records recently released PEN Trio’s album, Found Objects New Music for Reed Trio, featuring music expressly written for the ensemble, which is also available on streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. Nora is currently writing the book, Notes for Oboists: A Guide to the Repertoire, part of the Notes for Performers series published by Oxford University Press.

Prior to her appointment at Lawrence, she was Associate Professor of Oboe at Western Michigan University, where she also coordinated the Bullock Performance Institute, and at Kansas State University, where she also served as Associate Director for the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. Nora is a graduate of Lawrence’s acclaimed double-degree program in oboe performance and philosophy and received a Master of Music degree from the Yale University School of Music and a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. Her principal oboe teachers include Michael Henoch, Richard Killmer, Ronald Roseman, Howard Niblock, and Grover Schiltz (English horn).

At Lawrence, Nora enjoys teaching a variety of courses including Aesthetics of Music, Music in Fin-de-Siècle Paris and Vienna, and Sublime Frequencies: Punk Ethnography in Our Digital Age. Nora lives in Appleton, Wisconsin and enjoys spending time with her two standard poodles, Chloe and Cleo, and cat, Alexey. Nora enjoys the outdoors and recently used Lawrence’s December Term to walk 500 miles following the Camino de Santiago from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.