Marcel Tabuteau (2 July 1887 – 4 January 1966) was a French-American oboist who is considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing.
Tabuteau was born in Compiègne, Oise, France, and given a post in the city's municipal wind band at age eleven.
A French law that had been enacted on July 11, 1892 gave special consideration to graduates of the Conservatoire, allowing him to be demobilized after just one year of service.
He returned to the United States in 1907 and the union again tried to have him expelled, on the grounds that there had been a break in his US residence since filing his first citizenship papers.
During the thirty years Tabuteau taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, he came to exercise a decisive influence on the standards of oboe playing in the whole United States, as well as raising the level of woodwind achievement in general.