California native JELENA DIRKS is the third generation of professional women musicians in her family. She has been appointed by Daniel Barenboim to play in the oboe section of the Chicago Symphony for the 2004-2005 season, where she will be sharing the stage with her mother, Chicago Symphony violist Karen Dirks.
Jelena began study of the violin at age three, the piano at age four, and began playing chamber music with her mother at age 10. The following year Jelenaís enthusiasm for music expanded to include the study of the oboe. She has two Bachelors degrees from St Olaf College and two Masters degrees from the University of Michigan: one of each in oboe performance and piano performance.
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as an "accomplished and virtuosic" performer, she is a two-time winner of the Musical Merit Foundation Scholarship Competition. Ms. Dirks has performed in concert on both the piano and the oboe, in recitals, chamber music concerts, and with orchestras across the United States, and at international venues in China, Canada, and the Lesser Antilles. Her chamber performances with Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians have been praised as "polished, technically superb and beautifully balanced."
Renowned as a pedagogue as well as a performer, she is on the woodwind faculty of the Madeline Island Music Festival, and has given numerous masterclasses, lectures, and coachings, including a weekend in residence at the 2003 Chamber Music of America conference. As the newest member of the Prairie Winds Quintet, Jelena joins one of the premier wind quintets of America.
