American-Australian oboist Briana Leaman, PhD, has performed and taught throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. A native of South Carolina, Briana completed her Bachelor of Music Performance degree at the University of South Carolina with Dr. Rebecca Nagel, and received her Master of Music Performance at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin with Sébastien Giot and Christian Schmitt. In 2023, Briana received her PhD in Music Performance from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne, where she was a Melbourne Research Scholarship recipient. She is an active member of the Australasian Double Reed Society, and has served on the national committee as the Victorian State Representative since 2019.

 

Since her first orchestral appointment at the age of 21, Briana has performed with orchestras in the United States., Europe, and Australia including the Greenville and Charleston Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Opéra National du Rhin, Victorian Opera, and Orchestra Victoria. In France, Briana also worked in collaboration with renowned conductor Theodor Guschlbauer to program and perform solo and chamber performances at the Prix de l'Europe Awards Ceremony and at events for members of the European Parliament. She has performed in the World Premieres of The Dressmaker (Peter Rutherford and James Millar, 2018) and A Christmas Carol (Graeme Koehne and Anna Goldsworthy, 2022), as well as the Victorian Premiere of Mimi's Symphony in 2020 (George Ellis and Justine Clarke, 2019).

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Briana also maintains an active solo and chamber career, particularly in partnership with pianist Yasmin Rowe and with saxophonist Joseph Lallo as Duo Obax. The ABC Classic recording of Luke Severn’s and other lines by Duo Obax and Yasmin Rowe has become a fixture on ABC Classic FM and ABC Classic’s ‘Best of Australian Classical Music’ and ‘Swoon’ playlists since its release in 2021.

 

Briana is the oboe teacher at Loreto Mandeville Hall and is a Teaching Associate for the Chamber Music and Musical Perspectives courses at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where she is also the Chamber Music Assistant. She has given masterclasses at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium, the University of Texas at Austin's Butler School of Music, Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music, and the University of South Carolina, and was a Guest Mentor for 3MBS’s ‘The Talent’ in May 2023.

 

Briana is proud to be a Rigoutat Artist and plays on a model ‘J’ oboe.