A "museseeker" from the minute she was born, Marianne Osiel is a walking, talking mosaic of musicality, from her chops as a classical oboe player in a symphony to blues slide guitar in her band -- yet another featuring her improvisational sense.
Growing up in California, Marianne longed to taste new fields of life and art, and made her way from San Francisco where she was the female lead singer in a well-known country-rock band (Hearts on Fire) to Music City, Nashville, TN. She auditioned for the second oboe position in the Nashville Symphony, and found herself surrounded by colleagues of her previous 'life' as a classical musician. Though musically satisfied and challenged by the classical world, Nashville being the songwriting contagion that it is, in 1991, she found her songwriting voice from listening with her ears and heart to other musical arenas. She then took a step out into the great unknown as she courageously chose to leave her longstanding tenured position with the Nashville Symphony and headed out for New York.
Marianne is a consummate musician with her music rooted in blues, folk, and jazz, with a keen harmonic sensibility. She's a sought-after "sideman"as a slide guitarist, oboist, and singer, having worked with such artists as John Hall (Orleans) at Bottom Line, Nanci Griffith at Blue Note, among many others, and has jammed with Jackson Browne to Steve Earle to Gatemouth Brown. She's also a classically trained oboist who made her living for 10 years as a full-time member a few symphony orchestras around the country. In 2004 Marianne completed an all-improvised CD called "How The Light Gets In", which features her on oboe & English horn in DUET with four extraordinary New York keyboardists.

Marianne currently teaches both live and online within the Ulster County, New York area.