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Classroom Studies (Music)

About

Composer and bassoonist Brad Balliett is based in New York City. Principal bassoonist with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Balliett is an artistic director for the chamber music collective Decoda (Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall), and performs with the leading new music groups in New York, including Signal, Metropolis Ensemble, and Deviant Septet.

Balliett has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Musicians, New York City Ballet, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Festival performances include Marlboro, Tanglewood, June in Buffalo, Newport Jazz Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, and the Lucerne Festival.

As a composer, Balliett has witnessed and participated in premieres of his orchestral, chamber, choral, opera, and incidental music. Recent commissions have come from Carnegie Hall, Cecelia Chorus, Metropolis Ensemble, Notre Dame University, Experiential Orchestra, Cantori New York, and the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra Wind Ensemble.

Balliett’s creative collaboration with his twin brother, Doug Balliett, and Elliot Cole as the band Oracle Hysterical has yielded a number of operatic works, including a spoken-word opera that premiered at the Lucerne Festival as a Spotlight Artist in composition.

Brad and Doug Balliett host a weekly radio show, The Brothers Balliett, on WQXR’s Q2 Music, and curate a monthly concert series at Spectrum in the Lower East Side. Brad is a member of the Evening Division faculty at Juilliard, and has presented lectures for Carnegie Hall.

As a teaching artist, Balliett regularly leads composition and songwriting workshops in prisons, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters, both for Carnegie Hall and its Affiliate Ensemble, Decoda. He is a faculty member for Musicambia at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Balliett graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2005, and holds an MM from Rice University. His hobbies include writing sonnets, running, and reading Shakespeare.