Edino Biaggi

1979 -

Edino Biaggi, oboist, has spent the last decade studying with the leading oboe performers and teachers of our time. He has garnered several awards and recognition for his playing and for his innovations in oboe reed making. He has maintained studios in Argentina, Chicago, and New York.

Biaggi was born in Cordoba, Argentina, one of two sons of Celin Crispens and Eduardo Biaggi. He spent his childhood in Cruz Alta, a small town in that country. He was raised in a home without television; he and his brother were encouraged to create their own entertainment.

This environment led Edino to set up a workshop where he pursued imaginative projects including the restoration of a 1970s motorcycle and a two-horse carriage, and the construction of several oboes and English horn prototypes using Argentinean hardwoods - all by the time he was nineteen. More recently his instruments and the hardwoods he used have attracted the attention of instrument manufacturers who are considering using his ideas and materials in their commercial instruments.

His great uncle, Rodolfo "Wizard Hands" Biaggi (1906-1969), was a leading tango pianist, composer, and bandleader. Both of his parents were very musical, his mother being an amateur alto singer and his father a professional lyric baritone-bass and pianist who at one time had aspired to be a conductor but instead became a physician.

Biaggi started study on clarinet and drums in a conservatory when he was eight years old. He recently wrote about his early training and first oboe teacher:

I never really liked the clarinet; I thought it was a very boring instrument. My dad had me listen to a bunch of oboe recordings and I fell instantly in love with it. My parents found a very good oboe teacher in another city, so I traveled once a week to Rosario for my oboe lessons.

I studied with professor Luis Giavón for about six years. I still remember those lessons; he always focused on being musical, on lyricism, enjoying the moment and giving everything you had when performing. He was a big inspiration in my childhood and still is today.

At age fifteen, Biaggi decided he could not live without performing music and decided to pursue oboe performance as a career. He became principal oboe of the Rosario Youth Symphony Orchestra at that time and three years later assistant principal oboe in the local symphony and a player in other professional orchestras in the community, including the chamber orchestra and Rosario Contemporary Ensemble.

In 1999 he began study with Rubén Albornóz , principal oboe of the Colón Theatre Orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and served as principal oboe of the Mercosur Symphony Orchestra. In the following year, he became principal oboe of the Colón Theatre Academic Symphony Orchestra.

In 2001 Biaggi enrolled at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he received a four-year full scholarship and completed a B.Mus. in oboe in 2005, studying with Alex Klein, then principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Biaggi also studied privately with James Caldwell, formerly of the Oberlin Conservatory; Grover Schlitz, former English horn player with the CSO; and Ray Still, former principal oboe of the CSO.

After graduating from RU in 2005, he stayed in the Chicago area, where he continued to perform in many of the well-known venues; taught privately for two more years, having established a private studio in 2003; and was principal oboe in the Advent Chamber Orchestra. In the year prior to establishing his studio, he had been the winner of the "La Scala di Seta" oboe contest at RU.

In 2007 Biaggi enrolled at Queens College, CUNY, where he studied with Humbert Lucarelli and received an M.A. in oboe performance in 2009 and an Artist Performance Certificate in 2011. While studying at QC he became a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society in 2007, received the Dorothy and Morris Grosser Woodwind Award in 2008, the Ronald Roseman Woodwind Award in 2009 and 2010, and the Adele Lerner Chamber Music Prize and Decimus ut Serviamus Award in 2011. He is now serving as an adjunct oboe instructor at Queens College and Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.

The earlier skills he had developed while experimenting in his workshop as a teenager led to innovations in making oboe reeds that dramatically sped up the process while improving their sound and projection. He is able to hand-make 4,000 professional reeds a year and presently supplies reeds for several of the largest music stores nationwide.

In addition to teaching oboe and performing frequently in prestigious recital and concert halls in Latin America, the U.S., and Europe, he also gives lessons in reed making and conducts online reed-making sessions with students in ten states in the U.S. and in Europe, Australia, and South America.

ds/2013

Source: Information provided by Edino Biaggi, September 2010, Biography at edinobiaggi.com website, 2013.