Shianne Bonham is an oboist, studying at Vanderbilt University with the intent of graduating in the spring of 2025 with a Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance. Her department of focus is classical music, with an emphasis on including works of modern music. She studied with Dr. Jennifer Potochnic from 2014-2021 and later in 2021 began studying under Dr. Jared Hauser at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. During her time at the Blair School of Music, she has been given the opportunity to study the oboe, English horn, oboe d’amore, and piano. These opportunities have ranged from chamber music ensembles, recordings, and ensemble positions. She has held principal positions in both the Vanderbilt University Orchestra and the Vanderbilt Wind Symphony. 

Shianne has studied a wide range of oboe repertoire with both my ensembles and in her lessons. The ethos of the Blair School of Music is centered around the expansion and inclusion of the Western canon, while still respecting and educating its students on the repertoire in which the history of Western classical music was built. In her private instruction, she has studied much of the standard oboe repertoire, which includes the Oboe Quartet in F Major (Mozart), The Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (Britten), Three Romances for Oboe and Piano (Schumann), and many more. In the Spring of 2023, Shianne performed the quartet, Voyage of Life, which contained solo oboe and string trio. In fall 2024 the Blair School of Music hosted the “Florence Price: A Celebration” a series of concerts and lectures which honor the late composer, Florence Price. She played principal oboe for the performances of her pieces Piano Concerto in D minor and Ethiopia’s Shadow In America. 

In the Fall of 2022, she was appointed by the Blair School of Music Musicology and Ethnomusicology program as a course assistant under Dr. Robert Fry. Also in the fall of 2022, I accepted a fellowship with the Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives, titled “The Diverse World of Yusef A. Lateef: From Archives to Performance.” This was in partnership with the Blair School of Music, the National African American Music Museum, Vanderbilt Special Collections, and the Buchanan Library Fellowship Program. 

Shianne has also been an active participant in the Blair School of Music’s “Banding Together” initiative which was founded with the purpose of enhancing cultural interchange and understanding through the concert band experience. Participants of this program travel to various countries in Latin America and take part in a variety of musical activities like teaching, master classes, ensemble performances, and culturally specific activities. She has traveled with this program to Santa Rosa de Osos, Colombia to participate in the Banda Sinfónica de Las Americas ensemble and most recently to Havana, Cuba for La Orquesta de CubanAmericana de Vientos ensemble. Her trip to Cuba was an unprecedented partnership between the US Embassy and the

Instituto Cubana de la Música. In the summer of 2024, Shianne traveled with them once more to the Dominican Republic to participate in Festi-Band República Dominicana. 

When not immersed in the world of music, you can find Shianne making reeds or tending to her many, many, plants.

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