James B. Caldwell, an East Texas native and railroad station master's son who went on to become one of the world's most respected and admired oboists, educators, and proponents of early music, died on Wednesday, February 8, at the EMH Regional Medical Center in Elyria, Ohio, where he was being treated for lung cancer. He was 67.

A professor of oboe at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music since 1971, he trained many of the profession's leading oboists, including Alex Klein, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

"James Caldwell was too big a person for just one activity," says Klein, a 1987 graduate of Oberlin who also received an Artist Diploma in 1989. "He was a great teacher and artist, a philosopher, a bonsai aficionado, an avid collector, and a wonderful mentor. He excelled at everything. He opened the door to the world. He saw joy and beauty in every millimeter of life, and he brought his vast knowledge and experience into the practice of his teaching. I am sorry for the generations of musicians who will not have the opportunity to study with him."

Caldwell's performance career included serving as principal oboist of the National Symphony Orchestra, the Puerto Rico Symphony, and the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia; he was also an oboist and a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and soloist with the Casals Festival Orchestra and the Chicago Little Symphony. He gave recitals at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, and was a member of the Marlboro Music Festival. As a chamber musician, he performed with the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, the Oberlin Woodwind Quintet, the Soni Ventorum Quintet, and many others.

Caldwell's lifework as an artist extended well beyond the traditional boundaries of a professional oboist. He was a founder of the Washington Consort of Viols, making frequent appearances at the Smithsonian Institution, and he performed in other early music concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at Aston Magna, a foundation dedicated to early music and its cultural context. But it was during Caldwell's tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra that his artistic life took its sharpest baroque turn, a direction that would inevitably become the foundation of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music's reputation as a center for the study of early-music performance.

In a forthcoming article for Oberlin Conservatory, the music school's annual magazine, Heidi Waleson writes: "Caldwell, the principal oboist at the National Symphony and a passionate convert to the idea of historical performance, had taken up the viola da gamba. He and his wife, Catharina Meints, a cellist, traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to study with famed cellist August Wenzinger, then the leading teacher of the instrument. They began to collect period instruments, and brought them along to Ohio, where Caldwell was to teach oboe at Oberlin and Meints joined the Cleveland Orchestra."

They brought more than period instruments with them to Oberlin. In the summer of 1972, Caldwell and Meints founded the Baroque Performance Institute [BPI], the country's first summer institute for early-music singers and period-instrument players. They invited Wenzinger to Oberlin to direct the three-week program. Now in its 34th year, BPI trains many of the musicians who perform with the Cleveland baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire, and other notable groups.

In a review of a BPI faculty performance in June 1991, Plain Dealer music critic Wilma Salisbury praised Caldwell and his colleagues for their rendering of music by Henry Purcell: "The well-matched players … played with beautiful tone, sensitive dynamic nuance, and exquisite ensemble."

Caldwell's colleagues held him in great regard for his extraordinary musicianship and his broad range of artistic expertise. "Jim was a multi-faceted person, a superb musician held in the highest esteem in the oboe world, but his friends all knew him as a creative genius who ceaselessly pursued myriad interests," says gamba player and BPI faculty member Mary Anne Ballard.

"He built a monster harpsichord of three keyboards while living in the Puerto Rican jungle and playing oboe with the Casals Festival," she recalls. "He amassed and oversaw the meticulous restoration of perhaps the world's greatest collection of violas da gamba, carving bridges and performing other maintenance tasks himself, as well as becoming a quietly virtuosic player and performing as continuo accompanist and duet partner with his wife, viol virtuoso and teacher Catharina Meints. His other interests included collecting art nouveau glass and furniture, stained glass making and etching, jewelry making, bonsai cultivation, and in the last two decades, computer art and musical composition using synthesizers. He was a man who felt passionately about everything he did, from playing the card game Liverpool Rummy—which became a theatrical and almost violent experience with him at the table—to regaling and entertaining his friends as a consummate storyteller in the old Southern tradition, to crafting the finest oboe reeds. His stage persona, however, was visually modest; he achieved his brilliance and high expressiveness through an economy of means, revealing a dedication to his art that transcended the individual, and that took his playing into the realm of the universal human spirit."

In the academy, Caldwell's reputation was equally stellar. His appointment to Oberlin's faculty brought with it a three-fold increase in the number of prospective oboe students applying for admission.

Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull says, "James Caldwell's professional accomplishments cannot be measured at this point in our history. His reach into the world of music and art will be felt for generations to come. He was an integral part of Oberlin, and his profound work as an artist and teacher, conjoined with his intellectual capacity and unlimited curiosity, served to help shape the ideals we prize most at our Conservatory. He will be greatly missed by all of us."

Caldwell's discography includes orchestral recordings on RCA and Columbia Records and chamber music recordings for the Lyrichord, Desto, Cambridge, Phoenix, Gasparo, Vox, and Smithsonian labels. A reissue of recordings Caldwell made throughout the last 40 years—on modern as well as on baroque oboe—is forthcoming this year on Boston Records. The booklet for the CD, BuildingCastles in the Sky, will also feature his original artwork.

James Caldwell earned his diploma at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1961, where he studied with John de Lancie, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Caldwell received the Albert Spaulding Award at Tanglewood in 1958.

Caldwell is survived by his wife, Catharina Meints, and their son, Jonathan.