If anyone ever gives an award for Best Performance by an Oboist in a Supporting Role, Alison Chung might just take home the prize. The Kansas City Symphony’s associate principal oboe since 2017 has distinguished herself in a wide range of repertoire, and she’s just getting started. 

“In seven years, I played in five orchestras,” the Chicago native said recently, “and although I was getting my footing there, I like the job here and I like the colleagues.” She has proven an ideal complement to the section: With the Symphony’s magnificent principal oboe, Kristina Fulton, and English horn wizard Matthew Lengas, Alison has joined one of the strongest oboe sections in the United States. 

Her musicianship is characterized by a personable warmth, an emotional maturity, and a sonority that can fill the hall with an exquisite “bloom.” She said the associate principal position suits her musical persona: Alison is a collaborative player at heart, a musician who loves to move to the principal chair occasionally (primarily for concertos or when the principal is not performing) but whose main strength is in lending support to the section. Having performed as principal in other orchestras, she prefers not having the enormous pressure of what is arguably the most nerve-wracking position in the modern orchestra. “It’s nice being a supportive colleague,” she said. 

Alison is a first-generation Korean American whose parents, Kwan and Hae Jung, emigrated to the Chicago area in the 1970s and raised their four daughters in a home filled with music. All four sisters studied Suzuki piano and string method early on, and all studied music in college. In grade school Alison took one lesson each on clarinet and oboe and decided on the latter, starting lessons in the fifth grade. “I chose the oboe for its uniqueness,” she said, “and because it was an instrument that other family members hadn’t played before.” (Her oldest sister, Sharon, played clarinet, as had her father in middle school.) 

In eighth grade she became a student of Robert Morgan, a renowned oboe teacher and 45-year veteran of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra. She continued with Robert for her first two years of undergraduate study at Chicago’s DePaul University, later completing her bachelor’s degree with legendary oboe professor Richard Killmer at the Eastman School of Music, where she also earned her master’s degree. 

From each of her teachers she learned something distinctive, and each was of equal importance to her musical outlook. Robert Morgan “taught me how to be more detail oriented,” she said. “Some lessons we wouldn’t get past one phrase, and it really helped train my ear, to do a lot of reflecting on my sound.” With Richard Killmer she enjoyed taking in “the big picture,” she said, “taking that training and ‘letting yourself go’ a little bit, getting comfortable. Because a lot of times you can get so ‘in the notes’ that you forget the music.” 

For performers on this most confounding of instruments, music-making is a constant battle to transcend the elements toward making beautiful music. And when you are young, “it’s about making sure you play in tune, play in the right rhythm, check off all the boxes. Things can get a little too mechanical.” 

A sign on the wall in Richard Killmer’s studio reads: When in doubt, play beautifully. He sometimes told his students that their goal should be no less than to bring tears to listeners’ eyes. “He wanted us to make sure we don’t forget that a concert is not just playing the right notes,” Alison said. “It’s actually a significant experience for the audience.” Richard’s philosophy was also about allowing each musician to be an individual. “He didn’t want any of us to sound the same. There was never one specific way of playing oboe that was correct: everyone had their own distinct and unique voice, and he nurtured that.”  

Because orchestras employ relatively few wind and brass players, in comparison to the army of stringed instruments seated downstage, wind positions are fiercely competitive. Alison has taken part in no fewer than 39 auditions in her career, and she held positions at a number of major orchestras before finding her niche in Kansas City; among them are the Grant Park Festival, Florida Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, and Houston Grand Opera/Ballet. (She also performed with the orchestras of Fort Worth and New Zealand, and earlier in life she and her twin sister, Amy, were members of the Disney Young Musicians Symphony: where as 12-year-olds they experienced the thrill of performing at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.) 

Alison was welcomed with enthusiasm to our city, where she was happy to sit next to Kristina, a former colleague and fellow at Miami’s New World Symphony. In 2022 she met attorney Tom Hershewe on a blind date arranged by her friend Celeste Johnson Frehner, UMKC Conservatory’s professor of oboe. The two were married in an intimate ceremony at Loose Park last spring.

One of the main problems with the oboe is the very thing that gives the instrument its distinctive sound: the “double reed.” Oboists spend many hours every week making their own reeds out of a rare cane that is found only in certain regions in southern France: taking the raw cane and splitting, gouging, shaping, and shaving it to about the thickness of a human hair. It is wrapped and trimmed with a precision and care that almost amounts to alchemy. 

The cane has to be “just the right diameter, it has to be straight, and it has to be aged long enough, dried long enough,” Alison said, adding that a single reed can take three hours or more to make, generally spread over two days, and the odds that it will be concert-worthy are somewhat slim. “Out of every 10 that I make, two or three end of functioning,” she said. 

Yet reed-making is so integral to the lives of oboists and bassoonists that no professional player can get by without mastering it. And as longtime Cleveland Orchestra principal John Mack famously said: “You have to make an entire laundry basket of reeds before you can start to become adept.” Double-reed players generally have a reed studio in their homes, “and when I got this job, I decided I’m going to treat myself to a dedicated reed and practice studio,” Alison said. “Not my bedroom, not my living room, a separate room.”

Of course, the delicate French cane is susceptible to all kinds of climate and pressure changes, so a player has to have several available for any given concert or audition. When an orchestra tours, as the Kansas City Symphony will on its European jaunt later this summer, one of the oboist’s dilemmas is: Do I make reeds ahead of time and risk having them altered by weather and travel, or do I make them after we arrive and thus forego sight-seeing in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Hamburg? 

Oboists are perfectionists. After the first round of Alison’s Kansas City audition, she immediately began second-guessing herself about reeds, doubting her choice and wondering if she should pivot. 

“I was about to change reeds but I said, Nope, I’m going to keep using this one because I know it worked. You learn to turn off that part of your brain, all of the doubt.” And it worked: She got the job.

—By Paul Horsley

Tickets for the Kansas City Symphony’s 2026-2027 season are on sale. To subscribe or for single tickets call 816-471-0400 or go to kcsymphony.org. To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send an email to paul@kcindependent.com or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or Twitter/Instagram (@phorsleycritic).