<p>My daughter is a junior and getting ready to begin the college process. She is planning on being a bassoon performance major, with hopefully a minor in Spanish. She is looking for advice on great bassoon professors/schools out there.
She has played with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony for the past 2 years, and other groups in the Atlanta area since 7th grade.
She is also in her 2nd year as drum major for her school's marching band. School grades are very good, but no SAT/ACT scores yet.
Any advice is appreciated. Bassoon is a smallish world and I believe we all have to stick together!
Thanks</p>
<p>CIM, Rice, and Eastman are well regarded for their bassoon departments and renowned faculty.</p>
<p>Don’t know if this will help, but the D of a family we are friends with went to Shepherd/Rice on the bassoon and she absolutely loved it…she was/is a very high level player, was dead serious in high school, etc, plus Shepherd itself seems to be one of the best music programs in the country</p>
<p>Daughter’s friend went to Peabody for bassoon and loved the bassoon professor there. It is linked to Johns Hopkins, so students can major in performance and another major.</p>
<p>Good advice so far. Rice, Oberlin, Eastman, CCM, Juilliard, and Curtis seem to be places to go for bassoon at present.</p>
<p>Benjamin Kamins - Rice/Shepherd School of Music
Judith LeClair - Juilliard
Daniel Matsukawa - Curtis</p>
<p>These are all world renowned teachers</p>
<p>John Clouser is the Principal Bassoonist with the Cleveland Orchestra and Barrick Stees is the Asst. Principal. Both teach at CIM.
It’s very possible to get a minor in Spanish through Case Western at the same time as the conservatory sits on a corner of the CWRU campus and the students take classes at Case.</p>
<p>OK… getting further along in the college search… looking for a liberal arts college with a conservatory…my daughter will major in bassoon performance for sure…very interested in Oberlin and now Bard is on the radar. Does anyone have any information about their bassoon studio?
She is a junior with a 4.0 GPA, plays with the Atlanta Symphony Youth and Atlanta Wind Symphony, attended Georgia Honors program in bassoon, and has been the drum major at her high school since sophmore year. She is interested in a conservatory attached to a challenging liberal arts school.
Also…should she drop the drum major to devote more time to getting ready for auditions? Very little time to practice during football season.</p>
<p>At Oberlin she can choose to apply to both the conservatory and the college for the five year dual degree program or just the conservatory and take her college courses in Spanish without being burdened by the distribution requirements of the college. Bard is a required five year dual degree.</p>
<p>Sorry I don’t know about bassoon, but when we were researching college programs, we sent emails to a number of clarinet professors around the country and asked a variation of this question: Besides your program, where else would you consider to be a great place to train for clarinet? We received a number of helpful responses. Also, see if there are other discussion forums on the internet for bassoon. You might want to try this one:</p>
<p>[The</a> Bassoon BBoard](<a href=“The Bassoon BBoard”>The Bassoon BBoard)</p>
<p>I don’t think there are many bassoonists on this CC forum.</p>
<p>Also, our D was not a drum major but heavily into marching band. Your question on whether to drop is a tough one. It all depends on how much else she has going on, such as academics, and how high she wants to reach as far as music programs, and how good she is at time management and managing distractions, such as Facebook! Our D did not drop band senior year. I do not think her outcomes would have been different if she had dropped it. She is better at time management when she is busy.
Your experience might be different.</p>
<p>Just asked my son, who is in his third year at Bard Conservatory how his friend, an amazingly good Hungarian bassoonist at Bard likes the studio, and he said his friend goes around telling all and sundry how great it is - I’d be happy to get his contact info for you when the time comes…</p>
<p>Also, the language departments at Bard College are wonderful. A number of the conservatory students are getting their BA’s in language studies. And the college is 14% or so international.</p>
<p>From your research you probably already know - but for others reading this the bassoon faculty are Marc Goldberg & Patricia Rogers - both of whom seem to teach at a number of New York area schools, including Juilliard.</p>
<p>Our son is in the Cleveland Orchestra youth Orchestra as a bassoonist. We r currently looking for schools as well and have found similar schools to what everyone else is saying to be very viable options.(Eastman is great…visited and loved it) Rice came very highly recommended, Curtis, BUT the one that no one has mentioned that has a FABULOUS reputation (per the Interlochen folks, Cleveland Orchestra folks etc) is The University of Michigan! We plan to visit in March because they will allow our son to dual major in Performance and Education. He wants to perform, but knows that having education under his belt will help with the studio teaching. Check out U of Michigan! Bassoon teacher there is the head of the entire music school which is very well known… If we had to choose one place though, it would be the Cleveland Institute of Music. Barrick Stees was taught under Van Hoesen (Eastman retired) who was the guru of bassoon methods back a few years 
John Huntsman at Eastman also learned under Van Hoesen and we have met BOTH of these guys and not only are they very personable they are wonderful teachers (our son had a one hour lesson as part of the visit). …Good luck.</p>
<p>The most successful (most orchestral jobs won) bassoon programs are, in alphabetical order:</p>
<p>CCM
Colburn
Curtis
Juilliard
Northwestern
Oberlin
Rice</p>
<p>Hi Bassoons, and welcome.
I was wondering if your data is from undergrad vs grad schools, how recent is it, and where did you get the information.
That way it will be especially helpful.</p>
<p>I’m currently at Rice right now and have been taking orchestral auditions the past 2 years. This list is based on my observations on how successful people have been from these schools. I believe every full-time bassoon orchestral audition last year in the US was won by someone who went to at least one of these schools.</p>