Margaret Marco

The Kansas City Star describes Margaret Marco’s oboe playing as “wistful and utterly engaging,” while the Dubuque Telegraph Herald reports "Marco's deft and lilting expression ...was often reminiscent of a soprano's operatic aria."  Margaret Marco's "utterly engaging" performances have been heard in Europe, South and Central America, Canada and the United States. Her musical appointments have included principal oboe of the Orquesta Sinfònica de Maracaibo, in Venezuela, the Spoleto Festival in Spoleto, Italy, the Rome Festival Orchestra, Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada and the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.  Dr. Marco is the Associate Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas where she has taught since 1998.  Her teachers include Ray Still, Grover Schiltz, Dan Stolper, Mark Weiger, Dean Sayles and Nancy Ambrose King.  She holds degrees from Northwestern University, The University of Iowa and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

Dr. Marco is the principal oboist with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and performs with several Kansas City ensembles including the Kansas City Symphony.  She served as artist/faculty at the Ameropa Chamber Music Festival in Prague, Czech Republic; the Mozartissimo Chamber Music Festival in Madrid, Spain, the Sewanee Summer Music Festival in Tennessee and the Midwestern Music Academy in Lawrence, KS.  Recent performances include the University of Costa Rica, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), the Conservatorio de Musica in Puerto Rico and New Frontiers Music Festival in Laramie. She has performed at the International Double Reed Society Conferences from 2005-2016 and was selected as Chair of that organization’s prestigious Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox Oboe Competition.  

A strong advocate for new music for the oboe, Dr. Marco has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mu Phi Epsilon and the University of Kansas to commission, perform and record new chamber works by American composers.  She can be heard on her solo CD, Hidden Gems: Oboe Sonatas of the French Baroque, with the KU Wind Ensemble performing Copland’s Quiet City on the NAXOS label, and on two CDs with her trio Allégresse entitled Allégresse; music for flute, oboe and piano and Fresh Ink. She is a frequent performer on Kansas Public Radio.  In April of 2016, she performed the world premier of A Siege of Herons, a concerto for oboe d’amore, strings and percussion by fellow KU faculty member Forrest Pierce with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.