Erin Brophey shares the joy of music-making with audiences across Canada, most notably in her current position as Principal Oboe of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. Erin is profoundly grateful to make music and hopes that your live experience of music gives you chills and thrills. The waves of shared emotion are why she makes music.

Previously, Erin held the position of section oboe and English horn with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra for eight seasons. Erin takes such pleasure in performing with cherished colleagues in many Canadian orchestras, including the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Regina Symphony Orchestra, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Charlottetown Festival Orchestra, and the Elora Festival Orchestra. 

In 2000, Erin earned her Honours Bachelor of Music from Wilfrid Laurier University where she studied with James Mason. She completed her Master of Music degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, under the tutelage of Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida in 2002.

Erin is also grateful to have honed her craft at many summer festivals nation-wide, including Festival of the Sound, Westben Festival, Elora Festival, Stratford Music Festival, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, l’Orchestre de la francophonie, and the National Academy Orchestra. Recently, Erin blissfully performed at the Ritornello Chamber Music Festival with the Gryphon Trio.

An avid and joyful educator, Erin is a sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan and is the woodwind coach for the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra. In Saskatoon, Erin co-directs a community double-reed band called Squawk, is active in new-music programming, and also teaches a private oboe studio. Erin is also on faculty at Interprovincial Music Camp in Parry Sound, Ontario.

For information is available at www.erinbrophey.com

Land Acknowledgments

Before we can walk down the path towards reconciliation, we must start with truth. Erin is a descendant of Irish immigrants that fled to Canada from starvation and religious persecution during the Potato Famine of Ireland.

The Government of Canada West gave land of the Anishnaabe First Nation to Erin’s ancestors around the Lake Huron area. Even though the agreements of Treaty 29 were not upheld, her family farmed there for many generations.

No longer farmers, Erin’s family moved to Northern Ontario on the land governed by the Robinson–Huron Treaty of 1850 and spent her childhood at the shores of clean water, big rocks, and tall evergreens on the land of the of the people of the Nipissing First Nation.

Ten years ago, Erin moved to Treaty 6 territory and the Homeland of the Métis Nation to settle along the shores of the Saskatchewan river on land of the Woods and Plains Cree, the Assiniboine, and Métis Peoples. Erin is profoundly grateful to the people of Treaty 6 land for their pre-contact stewardship of this beautiful river. A treaty is a promise and a responsibility. We are all treaty people.