Nora A. Lewis (she/her)

In my role as Associate Dean of the Faculty, I oversee faculty development and mentorship, chair the university's Mentoring Committee, coordinate programming for new faculty, and serve on the Inclusive Pedagogy Committee. In addition, I am a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest's Strategic Advisory Group, the liaison to the Akademos online bookstore, and work with Lawrence's Wriston and West scholars. As an Associate Professor of Music, I work with an oboe studio of 8-10 students in weekly lessons, studio classes, chamber music, and reed-making workshops. My professional profile can be found below:

Originally from Naperville, Illinois, oboist Nora Anderson Lewis enjoys a varied performance career and has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series, with Alarm Will Sound, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Classical Orchestra, Wichita Symphony Orchestra, New Hampshire Symphony, Camerata Chicago, and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). She was a founding member of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente and held orchestral positions with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra and the Plymouth Philharmonic. She has performed in recital at St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London, on the Cranbrook Music Guild artist series, Hale Library concert series, and in live recital broadcasts on Blue Lake Public Radio, WMUK Kalamazoo’s “In Concert,” and “Live from Studio B” at WFMT in Chicago.

Nora has presented clinics, performances, and papers at national and international conferences including the Midwest Clinic, International Double Reed Society, Society of Composers Inc., College Music Society, CBDNA (southwest region), ClarinetFest, and National Flute Association in locations such as Finland, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. Honors include a Big-12 Faculty Fellowship, honorary membership in Sigma Alpha Iota as a National Arts Associate, Pi Kappa Lambda, and a Yale AlumniVentures Grant. For ten summers Lewis taught at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. She has served on the CMS National Advisory Board for performance, as editor for the Midwest Double Reed Society, and is consulting editor for The Instrumentalist magazine.

With clarinetist Phillip O. Paglialonga and bassoonist Eric Van der Veer Varner, Nora was a founding member of the PEN Trio, a chamber ensemble passionate about performance, education, and scholarship. From 2010-2019 the ensemble commissioned, premiered, edited, published, and promoted numerous new works and gave concerts, master classes, and entrepreneurial workshops throughout the United States as well as in Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Panama, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom. 

Summit Records recently released PEN Trio's album, Found Objects New Music for Reed Trio, featuring music expressly written for the ensemble, which is also available on streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. Nora is under contract with Oxford University Press to write  Notes for Oboists: A Guide to the Repertoire, part of the Notes for Performers series.

Prior to her appointment at Lawrence, she was Associate Professor of Oboe at Western Michigan University, where she coordinated the Bullock Performance Institute and was appointed as the inaugural Administrative Fellow, serving in the Dean's Office in the College of Fine Arts. In this role, she helped support the Director and Associate Director of the School of Music in special projects as well as graduate advising and mentoring; she provided additional assistance throughout an extended leave of absence of the School of Music Director.

At Kansas State University, Lewis served as Associate Professor of Music, Director of the Music Program, and Associate Director for the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. In her administrative role, she administered undergraduate (BM, BME, BA) and graduate (MM) music programs with approximately 225 majors and 40 faculty members. Previous positions include Assistant to the Dean of Faculty at New England Conservatory, in Boston, Massachusetts, Associate Editor at  The Instrumentalist  magazine in Northfield, Illinois, and Instructor of Music at Northwestern's Bienen School of Music.  Nora is a graduate of Lawrence's acclaimed dual-degree program in oboe performance and philosophy and received a Master of Music degree from the Yale University School of Music and a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. Her principal oboe teachers include Michael Henoch, Richard Killmer, Ronald Roseman, Howard Niblock, and Grover Schiltz (English horn). 

At Lawrence, Nora enjoys teaching a variety of courses including Aesthetics of Music, Music in Fin-de-Siècle Paris and Vienna, and Sublime Frequencies: Punk Ethnography in Our Digital Age. Nora lives in Appleton, Wisconsin and enjoys spending time with her husband Keith, their two standard poodles, Cleo and Ziggy, and cat, Alexey. Nora enjoys the outdoors and recently used Lawrence's December Term to walk 500 miles following the Camino de Santiago from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.