Robert Oades

Oades, Robert

Robert (William) Oades, trumpeter, teacher, administrator (born 7 August 1924 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England; died 25 April 2013 in Ottawa, ON). He studied at the RMSM 1945-6 and at the RAM with George Eskdale 1950-3, and also studied privately with Ernest Hall. He moved to Toronto in 1954 where he worked as an extra player for the TS, the Pro Arte Orchestra under Victor Di Bello, the Hart House Orchestra, and in orchestras for the COC and the National Ballet of Canada. He was soloist with several choirs, among them The Festival Singers of Canada and the Orpheus Choir of Toronto. He founded the Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, whose 4 to 12 members performed in the late 1960s in Toronto churches. After winning a Toronto Bach Society scholarship in 1960, he studied baroque trumpet 1960-2 in Boston with Armando Ghitalla. In 1968 under a Canada Council scholarship he studied with Edward Tarr in Basel, Switzerland. Oades played 1963-9 with the Stratford Festival orchestra, for which he was also personnel manager in 1968, and he coordinated its annual chamber music workshop 1966-9. He moved to Ottawa in 1969 to join the NACO. He resigned in 1974 to concentrate on teaching, but continued to appear frequently as a soloist in Ottawa. He performed Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks on baroque trumpet in Basel with the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble. He also played with the 12-member Ottawa-based Classical Brass 1982-4, which performed on CBC radio and toured regionally.

Oades began to teach privately in Toronto in 1954. He taught at the Brodie School of Music and Modern Dance 1965-8, gave master classes for the North York Board of Education (Toronto) 1965-9, and taught for the Association of Hebrew Schools of Toronto 1966-9. He began teaching trumpet at the University of Ottawa in 1966 and at Queen's University in 1969; he continued to teach at both universities in 1991. He was guest professor at the University of Michigan in 1986. Highly regarded as a teacher, Oades has also frequently acted as an adjudicator and examiner.

Oades performed on recordings of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks with the Telemann Society of New York (1961, Vox STDL-500-750) and the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble (1976, Erato STU-70-944/Mus H Soc MHS-4505), the latter on baroque trumpet, and on a recording of Schütz' Christmas Oratorio with the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (1980, Damzell DLM-813), also on baroque trumpet.