Fraser Jackson

Fraser Jackson has been the contrabassoonist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since 1990. He has also performed with such groups as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has co-founded two chamber groups, The Caliban Quartet and Musica Franca, whose recordings on the BIS, ATMA, and MSR Classics labels are known the world over for their inventive programming, their virtuosity and their stylistic variety.

Also in demand as a chamber bassoonist, Fraser performs regularly with New Music Concerts, Toronto’s elite new music group, and he was a long-time guest of the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival where he collaborated with such performers as Malcolm Lowe, Desmond Hoebig, Andrew Dawes, and the St Lawrence String Quartet. A keen and dedicated teacher, Fraser teaches bassoon at the University of Toronto and at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music and has taught with such organizations as Le Festival du Domaine Forget, Le Camp Musical des Laurentides, the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Interprovincial Music Camp (Ontario), Cammac, and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

He has given masterclasses at the Gatineau Conservatory, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and Indiana University; in 2017, he will give masterclasses at the University of Montreal and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He holds music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California where he was one of the last students to graduate from the studio of Norman Herzberg.