Elena Yakovleva is the principal Piccoloist with the United States Navy Band since 2015. She also holds Piccolo/3rd Flute chair position with the Delaware Symphony since 2008 and the Maryland Symphony Orchestra since 2010.
Elena Yakovleva has served as principal piccoloist of the United States Navy Band since 2015. As a featured soloist with the Navy Band, she performed on its 2018 national concert tour and at a military tattoo in Norway in 2022. She also holds the piccolo/third flute positions with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and the Maryland Symphony Orchestra, which she joined in 2008 and 2010, respectively.
Her orchestral engagements include performances with The Cleveland Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed under the direction of acclaimed pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher at New York’s 92nd Street Y and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
At the 2008 Singapore Sun Festival, Yakovleva served as principal flute of the Academies Festival Orchestra, an international ensemble of musicians from the Peabody Institute, London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Highlights included Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Academy Award-winning actor Geoffrey Rush as narrator and work with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen on Debussy’s La Mer.
A native of Kaliningrad, Russia, Yakovleva graduated from the Rachmaninoff Music College before continuing her studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen with Hans-Jörg Wegner and Gunhild Ott. She later studied with Jeanne Baxtresser at Carnegie Mellon University and with Marina Piccinini at the Peabody Conservatory, where she earned her Master of Music and Graduate Performance Diplomas in Flute Performance and Chamber Music.
An active educator, Yakovleva has been a member of the flute and piano faculty at the International School of Music in Bethesda since 2010. Her students have been selected for honors performances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.