Born in Pittsburgh in 1908, the son of a cantor, Robert Bloom performed as solo English hornist and assistant principal oboist in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski from 1930-36 after only three years of study with Marcel Tabuteau at the Curtis Institute of Music. From there he went on to hold the position of principal oboist of the Rochester Philharmonic under Jose Iturbi for one year before being called by Arturo Toscanini to the position of solo oboist of the NBC Symphony at its founding in 1938. Mr. Bloom's extensive discography includes his work with these orchestras as well as with Bruno Walter, Fritz Reiner, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein. As a founding member of the Bach Aria Group in 1946, he toured and recorded extensively. Pioneers in the study of Baroque performance practices, the Bach Aria Group's seminal collaborations established artistic and scholarly standards that became the benchmark for decades to follow.

Robert Bloom trained many of this country's major performer-teachers at the Yale School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music as well as at the Eastman, Manhattan, and Hartt Schools of Music, and Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and through festivals and master classes throughout the world. He developed a life-long devotion to the editing of baroque music, mentoring his pupils as they all contributed to and elevated the art. He was a founding member of the Sarasota Music Festival and the Bennington College Composers' Conference, where his own interest in composition flourished under the tutelage of Otto Luening.

Robert Bloom's full biography was entered into the 1998 edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the first American-born and -trained oboist so honored. Mr. Bloom (1908-1994) rests in his beloved Maine.