by Mike Telin
From a young age, Izaiah Cheeran had a fascination with music — which eventually led him to the oboe.
Next week, Cheeran — who was appointed second oboe/English horn of the Philadelphia Ballet in 2024 while still an undergraduate at Curtis — will make his ChamberFest Cleveland debut.
Already in his burgeoning career, Cheeran has made appearances with the Atlanta Symphony, Opera Philadelphia, Quad City Symphonies, and Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA. He has attended the Music Academy of the West and the Pacific Music Festival, and later this summer will be a fellow at Tanglewood.
We caught up with the ChamberFest Rising Star by Zoom at his home in Minneapolis.
Mike Telin: We’re looking forward to having you at ChamberFest.
Izaiah Cheeran: Thank you. This will be my first time going to Cleveland and I’m very excited to meet the other musicians and talk with audience members.
MT: You are part of the Festival’s Rising Stars: how did this opportunity present itself?
IC: Out of the blue, Diana Cohen sent me a text saying ‘Hey, we have this festival in Cleveland, and we’d love to have you for a week.’ After that we had a few phone calls, she told me about the theme of the festival and we talked about repertoire.
MT: Your first concert will be on June 17 at 7:30 in Mixon Hall.
IC: I’m playing a trio sonata by Josep and Joan Baptista Pla. I think it’s an interesting piece. I’d never heard of them, but doing some research I discovered they were oboists, which is very interesting. There were three Pla brothers, and they wrote a bunch of small show pieces. This is part of the collection of trio sonatas they wrote. I think they’re sort of interchangeable — they’re not written specifically for oboe, so they can be done with two violins or two oboes or any combination of instruments.
MT: The following night you’re playing Sergei Prokofiev’s Quintet for Winds and Strings along with Louis Spohr’s Nonet in F major. What are your thoughts about the Prokofiev?
IC: It’s one of my all-time favorite pieces. There’s a lot of oboe players who are not big fans of it just because it’s a little odd in a way. But I think that’s what makes it so special. It’s a little creepy, and kind of vague in what it’s about. And of course, the instrumentation is unique — oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass. I mean, how often do we get to play with double bass?
Collectively it’s a very interesting ensemble and each person gets their own little solo moments. To me, the piece is more about the colors that you can create with the music and less about where this or that phrase is going melodically.
I know the piece was written for a ballet company. and was originally going to be called Trapeze. I also play in the Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra, and when I played this I was trying to think of what the choreography would look like. Since there’s no storyline, what kind of story would you create? So you have to approach it a little differently.
MT: What’s your storyline?
IC: To me it feels like a circus gone wrong. There’s one movement where there’s a huge bass solo, and it feels like the elephants in the circus have gotten loose, like something crazy happened. Even the opening starts with sort of a sinister oboe melody. To me it feels like they’re setting up the circus and foreshadowing crazy events that are going to happen afterwards.
MT: That’s a great description. And what could be further away from Prokofiev than Spohr?
IC: Exactly. Spohr was from around the time of Beethoven, and between the Enlightenment and the German romantic period. So I hear a lot of those different elements in the Nonet. I feel like it’s going to be interesting to go from the Prokofiev right into the Spohr. I’m going to have to really change gears.
MT: You’re closing out the week with Barber’s Summer Music on June 20 at Federated Church.
IC: This is going to be my first time playing the quintet, but it’s one of those pieces that as wind players, that you carry with you throughout your career. And I’m sure that the other people have probably played it before, so it’ll be interesting to see and hear what they’ve gathered from playing it in different places, and how that’ll guide our interpretation of it for this particular concert.
MT: It’s a great piece.
IC: It is, and I’m excited to play it.
MT: What led you to the oboe?
IC: I always had a fascination with music — I started playing piano when I was really young and I did choir when I was really young as well. Then I played the recorder, and that was my introduction to wind instruments.
My brother played the saxophone, so I was constantly hearing music around me.
When it was time to pick an instrument, I knew I wanted to do something more challenging than what my brother did. So I thought, ‘What’s the hardest instrument I can play?’ And then I came across the oboe. It wasn’t even the fact that it’s the hardest instrument, it was just the unique sound it has. And I liked the fact that they only wanted one oboe in band.
I remember in elementary school my band director was hesitant to have somebody play oboe starting in fifth grade. But I was adamant, I said that I really want to play this. She introduced me to Carrie Vecchione, who was my private teacher up until I went to Curtis.
But everything really clicked and I just fell in love with it and wanted to keep getting better. And when the reed making thing started, I found that even more interesting,
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Published on ClevelandClassical.com June 10, 2026
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