Tiliakos
Oboist Konstantinos (Kostas) Tiliakos has always enjoyed dipping his toes into all manner of pursuits: He’s had his Pink Floyd and Genesis stage, his writing and editing stage, his mountain climbing stage, his shrimp protein stage — yes, that’s right, shrimp protein. That would be the research he did as an undergrad biology major at National Kapodistrian University in Greece, where he was born and raised.
In the end, as with so many of us, it was the impressions from childhood that remained: the memories of hearing Strauss and Beethoven on the record player at night, his father helping his children to nod off.
“I remember sleeping with that soft music,” Tiliakos says.
Today, those melodic lines continue to inspire him, as he joins the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music this fall as visiting assistant professor of oboe, replacing Marc Fink, who retired this past spring.