SCO Musician Highlight: Sarah Short

Next, meet our principal Oboist, Sarah Short!

Sarah completed her first year with Stratus during the 2022-23 season. She studied music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and she also spent 1 summer at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival and 3 summers at the MasterWorks Festival.

As a multi-talented instrumentalist of oboe, piano, and English horn, and as a career musician, music is certainly a central part of Sarah's life. She teaches piano and oboe at the Neighborhood Music School in Aurora, is a freelance oboist, and also works as a part-time church administrator. Sarah spent some time in a decidedly non-musical vocation, which has profoundly shaped her teaching philosophy and the way she values music in her life.

One thing Sarah loves most about Stratus is the immersive format of concerts. The immersive concerts are a seating arrangement unique to Stratus where the audience sits inside the orchestra, and Sarah had never experienced something like this until performing with Stratus. She loves how it gives audience members the opportunity to hear the orchestra from a new perspective. Her favorite thing about playing with an orchestra is the non-verbal communication among musicians as they play (which audience members can see up close and personal in an immersive-format concert!). Sarah says, “It's almost like the musicians are able to read each other's minds!”

You can hear Sarah Short in performance, and see where she’ll be next, by visiting her website - https://www.sarahshort.online/