Campbell, Jefferson

Biography

Recently appointed as Dean of the College of the Arts and Media at Central Michigan University, Dr. Jefferson Campbell has built a reputation as an international bassoon performer and pedagogue of high demand who has performed on stages throughout the United States and the world. With a focus on music that appeals to all audiences, Campbell has commissioned and premiered over 20 new works for the bassoon in recent years, and has been featured on four compact disc recordings including the Grammy-nominated Nostalgia, and online videos with tens of thousands of views. Among his several compact disc recordings, Nostalgia (Innova), which features Dr. Campbell as soloist and chamber musician, was a Grammy Award semifinalist in 2009.

He has performed with the Bowling Green Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Owensboro Symphony, Greensboro Symphony, Sioux City Symphony, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Richland-Kennewick Symphony, the Chengdu Philharmonic, Minnesota Ballet Orchestra, and currently a tenured member of the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Campbell has presented master classes at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, China, the Conservatoire Regionnale Rayonnement Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris, France, the Conservatoire Regionnale Rayonnement Lyon in France, the Conservatorio de Tatui in Brazil,  the Glazunov Conservatory in Petrozavodsk, Russia, the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kentucky, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. He has performed as a recital soloist in Florida, California, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, Nebraska, Minnesota and also Germany, France, Brazil, Russia and China.

As a member of the International Double Reed Society, Dr. Campbell has been published in the Double Reed, and has performed and presented at the IDRS Annual Conferences in 2003 (Greensboro), 2006 (Muncie), 2007 (Ithaca), and 2015 (Tokyo, Japan). His New York City debut recital at Symphony Space in January of 2012 was titled “21^st Century Bassoon: music that’s fun to play” and featured music composed since 2003. Collaborations with composers Jess Hendricks, Justin Rubin, Steven Moellering, and marimbaist/composer Gene Koshinski have resulted in a series of popular new pieces featuring the bassoon in a variety of settings including bassoon alone, with piano, with electronic playback and with various combinations of percussion. The popular funk percussion/bassoon duet “Get It!” by Koshinski was the result of a commission from Campbell in 2007 and has been performed and recorded by hundreds of performers worldwide.

Dr. Campbell has appeared several times on NPR/PBS radio and television in Nebraska, Michigan, and North Carolina. Dr. Campbell was a featured soloist with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra in performances of Vivaldi’s Concerto in E Minor and Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis in 2016, and appeared as soloist on Jean Françaix’s Divertissement for Bassoon and Strings with the Nebraska Chamber Players in 2018.

Dr. Campbell served as an adjudicator for the 2012 and 2017 Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition, the Silver Sounds International Chamber Music Competition in Russia, the Minnesota Music Educator’s Association All-State judge for bassoon, and as soloist at the College Music Society Rocky Mountain conference at the University of Denver. His instructional text Training Wheels for the Bassoon was revised in 2020 for its 15^th Anniversary, and he released Pocket Grooves, a compact disc recording of newly-commissioned music for the bassoon on the MSR label in 2019. Dr. Campbell completed a performance and teaching tour of Texas and Oklahoma where he presented recitals of music from this recording project.

In 2022, Dr. Campbell, his wife, soprano Jennifer Campbell, and pianist Alexander Sandor, premiered a newly- commissioned work from composer Jenni Brandon and author/poet Linda LaGarde Grover entitled Sea Smoke, based on the weather phenomenon over Lake Superior, and the Ojibwe stories connected with it. This performance also featured a new commission from composer Gabrielle Liriano for unaccompanied bassoon entitled Cheers!