Biography
Canadian oboist Aleh Remezau is renowned for his “sensuous and exuberant” performances (The Millbrook Independent) and “incredibly expressive” playing (Vancouver Sun). Having established himself as a sought-after orchestral musician, he has performed in major Canadian venues as well as concert halls in the United States, Austria and the United Kingdom. He has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, National Ballet Orchestra of Canada, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony as well as guest Principal Oboe with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly with the Esprit Orchestra, performing as both Principal Oboist and solo English horn.
After joining the Hamilton Philharmonic in 2020 as Principal Oboe, Mr. Remezau’s playing has been highlighted in major works such as Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade. During his first season, he was a featured musician on the orchestra’s video broadcasts of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet and Tomasi’s Evocations for Solo Oboe. In the upcoming 2023-24 season, he is thrilled to perform the Concerto for Oboe and Strings by Ralph Vaughan Williams as soloist with the Hamilton Philharmonic.
Mr. Remezau was an inaugural member of The Orchestra Now (TON) – a training orchestra based at Bard College, New York. With TON, he was a frequent performer at Alice Tully Hall, The Metropolitan Museum, and Carnegie Hall. In 2018, he was one of select few musicians invited to perform at the renowned Grafenegg Festival in Austria. While living in New York City, he has performed numerous times on oboe and English horn with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of world class conductors including Jaap van Zweden, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Jarvi and others. With Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic’s music director at the time, Mr. Remezau can be heard on their 2017 Grammy nominated recording of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 4.
Mr. Remezau performs extensively outside of the orchestra, seeking out different ways to connect and share his art with audiences. As an active chamber musician, he has performed in festivals such as the Ottawa Chamberfest, Scotia Festival, Sweetwater Music Festival and Big Lake Festival. As a member of The Happenstancers, an adventurous Toronto-based chamber ensemble featuring “an obscene amount of talent” (The WholeNote), Mr. Remezau has brought “considerable virtuosity” to works for oboe and English horn by Oliver Knussen and Elliott Carter, presenting concerts hailed as “bizarrely eclectic, …very intriguing and rewarding” (John Gilks, operaramblings). He has also performed as a pit musician on Broadway’s musical Wicked, as well as the Shaw Festival.
Aleh Remezau began his musical studies on piano, and his study of the oboe at fifteen. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where he studied with Clare Scholtz, and the Manhattan School of Music, with Liang Wang. He is an alumnus of The Music Academy of the West and Domaine Forget.