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American Bassoon: MIT Symphony Orchestra performs with Guest Bassoonist, John Miller MIT Class of 1964

Cambridge, MA...John Miller, Principal Bassoon for the Minnesota Orchestra, will return to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his alma mater, on Friday, December 7 to perform with the MIT Symphony Orchestra. The concert will take place at 8 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium, 84 Mass. Ave. Kresge Auditorium is handicapped accessible and is located opposite 77 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. This event is open to the public, and admission is $5 at the door.

Miller will perform a suite of works (outlining the form of a concerto) for bassoon and string orchestra by American composers including: Air by Alec Wider, Soliloquy by Bernard Rogers, and Concertpiece (American Dance) by Burrill Phillips. The program, conducted by Adam Boyles, will also include Barber's Essay No. 1, Respighi's Gli Uccelli and Sibelius' Symphony No. 5.

Miller, who received a BS degree in humanities and engineering from MIT in 1964, received his early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the New England Conservatory in Boston. While in Boston he founded the Bubonic Bassoon Quartet and made the premier recording of the Hummel Bassoon Concerto, released with the Weber Concerto on Cambridge Records. He assumed his present position as Principal Bassoon of the Minnesota Orchestra in 1971, when he also joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota. Since then he has continued his solo career, performing with the Minnesota Orchestra as well as numerous other orchestras, and has presented master classes and recitals at many of the world's major conservatories and music schools.

For more than 20 years he was a member of the American Reed Trio. Among his solo recordings are four concertos by Vivaldi and the Mozart and Vanhal concertos, all conducted by Sir Neville Marriner on two Pro Arte CDs. His teachers have included Louis Skinner, Arthur Weisberg, Stanley Petrulis, Sherman Walt, Stephen Maxym, and Thom de Klerk. One of Miller's educational activities, the Nordic Bassoon Symposium, begun in 1984 as the John Miller Bassoon Symposium, has attracted an international mix of hundreds of professional, student, and amateur bassoonists. Another, the Minnesota Bassoon Association, formed in 1983, presents bassoon related events, and has brought most of the world's prominent bassoonists to the Twin Cities area.

Miller is the first MIT graduate to be awarded a Fulbright grant for music performance (1964-5) and to hold a principal chair in a major American symphony orchestra.