Katherine Needleman: Oboist, Musician, Arranger, Composer, Etc. Queen of Filth Artwork

Crushing Classical

Crushing Classical is a series of interviews with classical musicians who are forging unique paths with their talent, creating their own artistic fulfillment and financial comfort, and finding ways to thrive. I celebrate these brave people who are taking routes outside of traditional orchestral or academic employment! As always, I invite you to listen for your own sparks and breadcrumbs, and use these interviews to find the possibilities that exist in your own life.

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Crushing Classical

Katherine Needleman: Oboist, Musician, Arranger, Composer, Etc. Queen of Filth

July 31, 2025

Katherine Needleman is a musician from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She was introduced to music in the formerly robust music education programs of the public school system, having played violin, clarinet, oboe, keyboards, and percussion there. She was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age 16 and dropped out of high school to attend. Later, she was expelled for academic incompetence by the Juilliard School in New York a month after winning their oboe concerto competition.

She has played the oboe professionally for a long time now and has observed her own feelings about being one of the few women included change over time. She is very interested in the potential of music and tries to write some herself. She is interested in the relationship between composers, performers, and the stage.

Recent musical highlights for Needleman include accompanying her cellist daughter in the Haydn C Major Concerto at a middle school assembly, a recital where most everything felt right and good at a retirement home outside of Philadelphia, and an 8am performance of her “Stolen Prophet” for oboe and piano and her “Spike Protein” for twelve oboes in Kansas. She enjoys arranging music she loves by dead white men and people who aren’t dead white men to make it possible to play great music not written for the oboe on the oboe.

She maintains a blog and Facebook page of some notoriety about her observations of and experiences in the world and the classical music industry. She has been hailed by the New York Times as a “small, intense woman.”

You likely know her from her work exposing the patriarchy that has long gone unnoticed in classical music, and from her substack newsletter at https://substack.com/@katherineneedlemanoboist.

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