Cornelia Sommer joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as Second Bassoon in 2023. Sommer is a versatile performer, arranger, and educator dedicated to sharing music with diverse audiences and expanding the bassoon’s repertoire. Her recent performance and research projects have focused on music inspired by fairy tales, including her album, New Enchantments: Fairy Tale Music for Bassoon, which combines newly commissioned pieces with her own arrangements of classic fairy tale works. Sommer’s doctoral dissertation on fairy tale music was awarded the Richard F. French Prize for an outstanding dissertation, and she has a large following on Instagram as @pulcinellie_ for her weekly videos of bassoon excerpts from fairy tale music.
During the 2022–23 season, Sommer was a frequent guest contrabassoonist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performing with the orchestra in concerts at Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, and on tour in Europe. She was previously Principal Bassoon of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and has regularly appeared as a guest musician with the Seattle Symphony, the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, and, on historical instruments, American Bach Soloists and Juilliard415. As a chamber musician, Sommer has performed with the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet and with chamber ensembles at the Kennedy Center, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She has played concertos with the Coeur D’Alene Symphony and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, was a semifinalist in the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition, and received the Yale School of Music Alumni Prize and Benzaquen Career Grant.
Sommer actively seeks to expand the bassoon’s repertoire through her collaborations with composers and her own arrangements. In addition to the new works on her forthcoming album, her arrangements have been performed around the world by members of the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony. Several of her arrangements, including Stravinsky’s Pulcinella for bassoon and piano, are published through TrevCo Music Publishing.
An experienced educator, Sommer currently teaches bassoon at Oakland University. She has served as an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School teaching music history and ethics, a teaching fellow in arts education at Juilliard, a teaching artist in Yale University’s Music-In-Schools Initiative, a bassoon instructor in the Yale Department of Music, and a faculty member at Seattle’s Vivace Chamber Players. She has presented master classes and lectures at the University of Alabama, Colorado State University, the University of Central Arkansas, and the International Double Reed Society Convention.
A graduate of The Juilliard School (DMA), Yale University (MM), and Indiana University (BM), Sommer has studied bassoon with Frank Morelli, Kathleen McLean, William Ludwig, and Francine Peterson, and baroque bassoon with Dominic Teresi.
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Sponsored by Geoffrey Nathan