John Miller Jr
Affiliate Faculty: Bassoon
John Miller received his early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the New England Conservatory in Boston. He also holds a BS degree in humanities and engineering from MIT and was awarded a Fulbright grant for music study in Amsterdam. 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 many times 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 Mr. 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.