ABOUT
California native Stephanie Patterson is the Associate Professor of Bassoon at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She has performed at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Robert Spano, in the busy streets of Moscow, on the pedestrian malls of Madrid, on stage in the Kappella hall of St. Petersburg, in a room with speakers on all sides in Belfast, Ireland as part of the Sonorities New Music Festival, in a medieval church in Prague with the Ameropa Festival, with Pierre Boulez at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, next to Squam Lake with the New Hampshire Music Festival, and atop a gallows at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival.As a founding member of the Enid Trio she has commissioned many new works for violin, viola, and bassoon. She is the education coordinator for the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Bassoon Symposium.
Stephanie's performances often include staging, costumes, or other ways of connecting with audiences. She performed Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis at the Wichita Knob Festival, and In Freundschaft by Karlheinz Stockhausen for bassoon-playing teddy bear at the Fairbanks New Music Festival. She also connects music to causes of human rights and equality, teaching a class on Popular Music and Human Rights at Columbus State University. Recent commissions include the works Angry Women, by Aleks Sternfeld-Dunn, and a piece based on the #metoo movement by James Ogburn. She has commissioned works by Jessica Rudman, Katherine Murdock, and was the soloist in the second performance of Nico Muhly's new concerto for bassoon and wind ensemble, Reliable Sources, which she co-commissioned as part of a consortium of bassoonists in 2018.
Dr. Patterson's book, An Introduction to Contemporary Music for Bassoon and 64 Etudes is available through Trevco Varner Music, and she enjoys bringing her love for contemporary music to new audiences around the globe.
Previously, Stephanie has taught at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and at Wichita State University. She was a member of the Lieurance Woodwind Quintet and Off Broadway Trio. She has been Principal Bassoon of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (GA), Acting Principal with the Atlanta Opera, and performed with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Chattanooga Symphony Orchesrtra, Winston Salem Symphony, Tulsa Symphony, Wichita Symphony Orchestra, and the Wichita Grand Opera. Her primary teachers were George Sakakeeny (Oberlin), Nicolasa Kuster (Wichita State), Scott Oakes (Wichita State), and Benjamin Coelho (Iowa).
She is a featured creator for EnsembleBlock, providing online interactive tutorials for students beginning and studying bassoon. Learn more at https://ensembleblock.com/eb-creators/stephanie-patterson/