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Chicago Tribune

Glenview native wins Ruth Bader Ginsburg's son's 'emerging artist' music contest

Glenview native Oliver Talukder, who plays oboe for the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, is musically inspired by everyone from Lady Gaga to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His closest brush with celebrity, however, came when he recently won a recording contract from the son of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Talukder won the 2025 Emerging Artist Competition, hosted in May by Chicago-based Cedille Records, founded in 1989 by James Ginsburg, and the Zell Family Foundation. Talukder won over the judges by playing oboe, English horn, flute and piccolo in a nearly 30-minute performance at the Spertus Institute Feinberg Theater in Chicago. 'We had brilliant performances all around, but what made Oliver stand out was an innate musicality and imagination in his musical choices—both in terms of what he played and how he played it,' noted Ginsburg. 'He has a knack for communicating to and really communing with the audience. You could really feel it.' The connection is intentional, Talukder says. 'Whenever I perform—even when I'm preparing for it and thinking about the pieces—I always put myself in the shoes of the audience,' he said. 'I'm always looking at new ways to engage the audience. I like playing music I like listening to, so that impacts how I play.' Ginsburg explained that the contest, open to musicians under age 35 who are from the Chicago metro area and have never appeared on a commercially-released album, is part of his record label's mission to bring Chicago's wealth of classical music talent out into the world and accessible to listeners. 'There are so many artists who have made their recording debuts on the label,' he noted. 'As we were starting to work more with these artists in building their careers, we got to thinking: Why don't we help the next generation of wonderful Chicago classical musicians or ensembles be noticed by having a competition and making the grand prize their debut recording?' Ginsburg's relationship with classical music was cultivated by his mother, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 'She was, to quote a phrase, 'notorious' for her love of classical music, particularly vocal music and opera,' he said. 'Music was always playing in the house. My mother discovered my love of classical music as a listener when I was a toddler and really nurtured that, taking me to Little Orchestra Society concerts in New York and later the Young People's Concerts with the Philharmonic. Pretty quickly I graduated to the New York City Opera at the Met. The love of music was something Mom very much encouraged.' This inspired Cedille Records' creation of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Fund for Vocal Music, which helps fund recordings by vocal artists. Since it was announced in 2022, seven such albums have been recorded, Ginsburg said. Talukder's introduction to classical music was a familial one as well: his two older brothers picked up instruments in elementary school. At the age of 7 or 8, while attending his eldest brother's performance in a Midwest Young Artists concert, Talukder heard the sound of his future. 'I listened to this piece they played—'Scheherazade,' by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It has a lot of great, gorgeous oboe solos,' Talukder recalled. 'After the concert, I went up to my brother and asked him what that instrument was. To my surprise, he said that was the oboe. That's when I fell in love with the oboe.' Talukder went on to play the instrument, as well as the English horn, in the Chicago Youth Symphony for four years. A 2020 graduate of Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Talukder played tenor sax in the school's Jazz Band and flute and piccolo in the marching band. He was one of two Maine East musicians selected to perform for a production of 'In the Heights' at the Illinois High School Theatre Festival in 2019. 'Any musical activity at school, I was involved in somehow, in some capacity,' Talukder said. 'I loved it so much. The environment felt like my second home.' In the summer of 2019, as a touring member of the prestigious Carnegie Hall National Youth Orchestra, Talukder played oboe at the Royal Albert Hall in London—the very place where, in YouTube videos, he had watched and admired major orchestras performing at the BBC Proms classical music festival. 'It was a full circle moment,' Talukder said. 'I was so inspired by those orchestras on YouTube and now I could be the next generation, inspiring people, connecting with them. That was the moment I decided I wanted to go around the world, spreading music, spreading joy.' A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Talukder was awarded first place in the 2022 Midwest Double Reed Society Competition and named Outstanding Instrumentalist in the 2024 Sphinx Orchestral Partners Audition Competition. He was granted tenure with the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra as second oboist in late 2024. Talukder will head into the studio to begin recording his first album this fall, he said. He'll become one of the roughly 80 recording artists and ensembles that have made their debut with Cedille Records, Ginsburg said. There are currently about 200 artists on the label, which has earned 36 Grammy nominations and eight Grammy Awards, according to the company. Talukder says his debut will be 'very Chicago-centered' while paying tribute to his parents and 'the cultural threads that define who I am,' he said. His upbringing in Glenview is an important part of this, he noted. 'I talk a lot with my friends about 'the village,'' Talukder said. 'I talk about this because my dad is from Bangladesh and he literally grew up in 'the village' in a very basic house. The thing that helped him grow up was the community. I think the community in Glenview is something that really allowed my general upbringing and my musical upbringing to flourish …. I think my roots in Glenview keep me grounded. Even when I move to a new city, I always think about that.' The next Emerging Artists Competition is scheduled for 2029, when Cedille Records marks its 40th anniversary, Ginsburg said.