Faculty & Staff

Dr. Elaine Peterson

Assistant Professor
Music History and Double Reeds

epeterson@colled.msstate.edu
(662) 325-2863
Music Building A, Room B

• D.M.A. University of North Carolina at Greensboro (NC)
• M.M. Hartt School of Music (CT)
• B.A. Alma College (MI)

Dr. Elaine Peterson serves as assistant professor of Music History and Double Reeds at Mississippi State University. In this position, she teaches music history, reed making, and private oboe and bassoon lessons, in addition to classes such as music appreciation, the history of film music, and instrumental methods. Dr. Peterson holds music performance degrees from Alma College (Alma, MI), the Hartt School of Music (Hartford, CT), and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she was a Hayes Fellow and served for two years as the director of the UNCG Collegium Musicum. She has also studied early music performance and dance at the Amherst Early Music Festival and with several leading scholars living in North Carolina.

Dr. Peterson has performed and presented throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Croatia and England. She was a featured soloist with the Starkville Symphony in October 2008 and the Toledo (Ohio) Symphony in 2004. In addition to playing bassoon with the Starkville Symphony, Elaine has recently appeared with the Mississippi Wind Symphony, the Tupelo, Tuscaloosa, Mobile, Memphis, Mississippi, Meridian, and Alabama Symphonies. She has performed as contrabassoonist for the Western Piedmont Symphony and Salisbury Symphony, in addition to regular appearances throughout North Carolina with ensembles including the North Carolina Ballet, Carolina Chamber Symphony, and the Greensboro, Wake Forrest and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras. In the past, she appeared as a performing member of the Connecticut Valley Chamber Orchestra, the Farmington Valley Symphony Orchestra and the New Britain Symphony.

Dr. Peterson was an organizer for both the 2002 International Tuba Euphonium Conference and the 2003 International Double Reed Society Conference. She has performed at the IDRS conferences in 2003, 2005, and 2007. She has also presented at national and international conferences of the Music Educators National Conference, The College Music Society and the Oxford Round Table. At Mississippi State, Dr. Peterson hosts an annual Double Reed Day, attracting participants from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.

Her bassoon teachers include Mary Beth Minnis, Jill Marderness, Marc Golberg, Donna Agrell and Michael Burns. Her oboe teachers include Ashley Barret. Dr. Peterson has studied viola da gamba and Baroque dance with Carol Marsh and recorder with Pat Petersen.