Mark Gaydon Tickets

Four years after taking up the bassoon at the age of 18, Mark Gaydon graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium with a Bachelor of Music degree with first class honours and the University Medal. In the same year he performed as soloist with the Queensland Pops Orchestra, won the Queensland Conservatorium’s Postgraduate Performance Competition and toured China with the Australian Youth Orchestra. He completed a Master of Music degree at Indiana University with Kim Walker, where he remained as Associate Instructor of Bassoon until 2002, he then moved to Montreal, Canada to study with Stephane Levesque. Other teachers have included Peter Musson, Hugh Ponnuthurai and Judy Wood.

Mark took up the position of Principal Bassoon with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 2003 and has since performed several times as soloist with the orchestra, performing works by John Williams, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Richard Strauss, Françaix, Weber and Mozart. In 2005 he won the Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Wind and Brass category, which entitled him to a solo performance with the Queensland Orchestra. He is an avid teacher and is a bassoon lecturer at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. He has been a regular tutor for the Australian Youth Orchestra and Adelaide Youth Orchestra and has also been guest artist at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. As a guest Principal Bassoonist, Mark has performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Queensland Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2009 he has been an advocate for Australian contemporary music and has commissioned and given the premiere performances of new works for the bassoon by Andrew Schultz, James Cuddeford, Gerard Brophy, Charles Bodman Rae, Katy Abbott and Luke Altmann. In 2011 Mark gave the first performance in South Australia of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XII for solo bassoon, and also performed the work in a live broadcast for 3MBS and at the Australasian Double Reed Society Convention in Melbourne.