Bas­soon­ist Dr. David A. Wells has extreme­ly wide-rang­ing musi­cal tastes, abil­i­ties, and expe­ri­ences. Cur­rent­ly, he is most­ly engaged in his­tor­i­cal­ly-informed per­for­mances on peri­od bas­soons rang­ing from the 17^th to the ear­ly 20^th cen­turies with groups includ­ing the Carmel Bach Fes­ti­val, Amer­i­can Bach Soloists, Sin­fo­nia Spir­i­tu­osa, Sacra­men­to Baroque Soloists, Aston Magna Fes­ti­val, and San­ta Cruz Baroque Fes­ti­val. He is also an adept per­former on the mod­ern bas­soon and con­tra­bas­soon, equal­ly at home with stan­dard orchestral/chamber/solo reper­toire and demand­ing mod­ern works involv­ing extend­ed tech­niques and/or elec­tron­ics. In addi­tion, Wells has a predilec­tion for tak­ing the bas­soon to unex­pect­ed places, most notably hav­ing played for nine years with the Djan­go Rein­hardt-inspired swing sex­tet Hot Club Faux Gitane.

Wells serves as Co-Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Meg Quigley, an orga­ni­za­tion focused on diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion with­in the bas­soon world. He is also active as a music schol­ar, hav­ing pre­sent­ed papers at the con­fer­ences of the Amer­i­can Musi­co­log­i­cal Soci­ety, the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Music, and the Inter­na­tion­al Dou­ble Reed Soci­ety. At Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Sacra­men­to, Wells teach­es bas­soon, music his­to­ry, and gen­er­al edu­ca­tion music class­es. He holds both a D.M.A. in Bas­soon Per­for­mance and an M.A. in Musi­col­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son, and also stud­ied at Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty and Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. His prin­ci­pal teach­ers include Jef­frey Lyman, Jeff Keeseck­er, and Marc Val­lon. When not play­ing or teach­ing, he can be found open-water swim­ming, pho­tograph­ing nature, col­lect­ing records, and try­ing to keep up with his super-librar­i­an/yo­gi wife, Veron­i­ca.

Con­tact Dr. Wells at david.wells@csus.edu.