Erin Brophey: Finding Our Connection
Train Records

On her debut recording, oboist and English horn player Erin Brophey forges strong connections, not just to the musicians with whom she partners but with composers from different places, eras, and backgrounds. Recorded in June 2025 in Saskatoon, eleven works have been recorded by the Canadian artist, many performed with pianist Bonnie Nicholson and others a rotating cast of string and woodwind players. Changes in personnel from one piece to the next makes for a constantly stimulating listen.

Currently Principal Oboe of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and previously a member of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, Brophey's appeared with Canadian ensembles from coast to coast, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Charlottetown Festival Orchestra, and many more. Consistent with the album theme, Brophey performs works by women, composers of colour, and others on an album that was recorded in Treaty 6 territory and the Homeland of the Métis Nation. The composers hail from Canada but other countries too, and the works are by both living composers and those no longer with us.

Exemplifying the concept of connection, Brophey opens the release with a piece by Yash Kathrotia that augments the oboist with violinists Kerry DuWors and Nova Wong, violist Jody Davenport, cellist Christina Bakanec, and double bassist Troy Morris. As a Saskatoon-based composer originally from India, Kathrotia writes music that draws on multiple traditions, and in A Farm Amidst Rajkot, he touches nostalgically on feelings associated with leaving one homeland for a new life elsewhere. The wistful ache of the music provides an enrapturing way into the album; it's telling too that while Brophey figures prominently in the arrangement (during a solo central episode especially), the other players are as critical to the impression the piece makes.

From there we move to the first of many duets between Brophey and pianist Nicholson. Known as the “Dean of African-American composers,” William Grant Still's represented by Incantation and Dance, written for oboe and piano and considered one of the most cherished works in the oboe repertoire. In featuring two instruments only, the performance, first rhapsodic and then jubilant, allows for an even greater appreciation of Brophey's artistry. She and Nicholson also unite for lovely readings of Nadia Boulanger's aromatic Trois Pièces, which relocates us to a 1914 Paris salon, and British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's heartfelt “Lament” from Three Silhouettes. Works by major Canadian composers are also featured, with the pioneering West Coast composer Jean Coulthard represented by the transporting three-part Shizen Suite and the celebrated Alexina Louie by the haunting Filigree, both pieces scored for oboe and piano.

A very different sound is generated when Brophey pairs with bassoonist Stephanie Unverricht and double bassist Morris for Saskatchewan-based Kendra Harder's Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Double Bass, the sinuous combination of the three instruments making for a wholly engrossing result. Wistfulness also pervades On Walmer Beach, during which London-born composer and oboist Althea Talbot-Howard pays tribute to the shingle beaches of Kent, where she lived and developed as a composer. In this serpentine duet, Brophey and the bassoonist give resonant voice to the feelings the composer sought to express in the lyrical three-part evocation. On Double Incantation by French-born soprano and composer Héloïse Werner, Brophey changes it up by pairing with cellist Bakanec, the performance separating itself from the others through its incorporation of voice punctuations. Dylan Pinette, a two-spirit Red River Métis oboist, English hornist, and composer from Manitoba, is represented by Wzhashkwedowens, which reveals connections to nature and Métis heritage. Unlike most of the other pieces, Pinette's lustrous setting is performed by a sextet, with Brophey joined by alto flutist Marie-Noëlle Berthelet and string quartet.

The release is available in streaming, CD, and LP formats, with the latter presenting six of the eleven works included in the download. Chrysalis, a resplendent three-part work about transformation by American oboist and composer Alyssa Morris, is available as a stream only, however, which reduces the seventy-seven-minute total of the digital version to a more digestible sixty-one for the CD. The release booklet includes a note by Brophey stating that the album was created “with so much laughter and so much love,” and the genuine affection she has for the music, her musical partners, and the composers is palpable. She also states, “All mistakes are mine,” but you'd have to listen extremely hard to hear one. This is an adventurous release distinguished by many things, but missteps isn't one of them.

October 2026