The Musicians

Bassoonist Nicolasa Kuster is Professor of Bassoon and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music in Stockton, California. She balances her full-time position in higher education with a rich orchestral, chamber, and solo performing life around northern California and beyond. She founded and continues to lead the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition and Bassoon Symposium, a biennial competition for young women bassoonists from the Americas and a three day event surrounding it. Kuster is Principal Bassoon of the Stockton Symphony and New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestras, Second Bassoon of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Monterey Symphony, and performs on occasion with the San Francisco and San Diego Symphonies. Previous positions include the Wichita Symphony (also serving on the faculty of Wichita State University), the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Virginia Symphony. She spent six summer seasons performing and recording with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in Italy and can be heard on the Chandos Label playing Principal Bassoon on Gian Carlo Menotti's operas and other works. She has enjoyed teaching and performing at many summer festivals and camps, including Anchorage Music Festival; Ameropa Chamber Music Festival in Prague, Czech Republic; Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop in Arcata, CA; the Marrowstone Festival in Bellingham, WA; Bocal Majority and Operation O.B.O.E. as well as Pacific Music Camp at home in Stockton. Her solo appearances with orchestra include performing Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Bassoon Concerto at the International Double Reed Society in 2013, Peter Schickele's Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra with the Stockton Symphony in 2015, multiple-city tours of Kazakhstan, as well as televised performances in Italy and Panama. She is the winner of the 1995 Chicago Musicians Club of Women's Solo Competition Farwell Award, which she won while a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago studying with the late Bruce Grainger. She is a Double Degree graduate from Oberlin College and Conservatory with a B.M. in Bassoon Performance and a B.A. in Religion, currently pursuing an Ed.D. in Organizational Change and Leadership from USC Rossier School of Education. Her solo CD, Metamorphosis, can be found online. https://www.nicolasakuster.com/