Laura Yawney is an East Coast-based oboist, educator, and mental health advocate. She currently holds the English Horn/Oboe position in the United States Coast Guard Band. She is an alumna of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and previous positions include Principal Oboe of the Endless Mountain Music Festival and Teaching Assistant for the Concert Orchestra at Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. She is also a co-founder of Sound Mind, an organization that advocates for mental health education and awareness within the classical music community.

Laura has appeared with ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Illinois Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, Reading Symphony Orchestra, Bay Atlantic Symphony, Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Symphony in C, and Reláche, a long-standing Philadelphia chamber ensemble specializing in new music. Her summer festival studies include Eastern Music Festival and two years at the Chautauqua Institute, and she has performed in master classes led by Dr. Nancy King, Katherine Needleman, Richard Sherman, and Mark Hill. During her undergraduate degree at the University of Delaware, Laura was a featured soloist with the Newark Symphony Orchestra in 2016 and the University of Delaware Symphony Orchestra in 2017.

Laura enjoys an active teaching schedule and is highly influenced by her previous work with the Civic Fellowship and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. In Chicago she contributed to a diverse array of education and community engagement initiatives, including coaching middle school and high school orchestra students, designing interactive educational concerts, teaching songwriting fundamentals to incarcerated youth, and curating innovative and equitably programmed chamber recitals. In Philadelphia she was an oboe instructor at Symphony In C Summer Music Camp, she led a master class at the Creative and Performing Arts High School, and taught music theory and private oboe instruction at Temple University’s Community Music Scholars Program.

Laura co-founded Sound Mind in 2019 and served as the Programming Director during her two years with the organization. In addition to starting Sound Mind’s blog, she spearheaded the design and implementation of Sound Mind’s community engagement initiative where team members hold workshops that center mental health awareness with musicians in the community. She also co-led the organization’s first two major online panel discussions that featured professionals such as Noa Kageyama, Ken-David Masur, Emma Gerstein, Carl Evans, and other major figures in the mental health and music fields.

Laura is a student of Peter Smith, Jeffrey O’Donnell, and Barbara Girdler, and holds degrees from Temple University and University of Delaware.