Stephanie Willow Patterson, a California native, is the Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University and the Principal Bassoonist of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Columbus, GA. Recently she has also played Acting Principal Bassoon in the Atlanta Opera Orchestra. She is co-founder and director of the Schwob Summer Music Festival, a summer camp for high school musicians to immerse themselves in chamber music for a week. Passionate about collaboration, outreach, and contemporary music, she has performed new music at the Fairbanks New Music Festival, the Sonorities Festival in Belfast, Ireland, and the Festival Internacional de Música Colonial Brasileira e Música Antiga in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. Dr. Patterson’s book, An Introduction to Contemporary Music for Bassoon and 64 Etudes is available through Trevco Music Publishing.
Crossing genres with performances in costume, Dr. Patterson has performed Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis at the Wichita Knob Festival at the FischHaus art gallery, and In Freundschaft by Stockhausen for bassoon-playing teddy bear. She has performed in Carnegie Hall, on the busy streets of Moscow, on the pedestrian malls of Madrid, in the gilded Kappella hall in St. Petersburg, inside a medieval church in Prague, for afterschool programs in Alaska, with Pierre Boulez at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, atop a gallows at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in a room with speakers encircling the audience, in the mountains of North Carolina, and in the woods of California.
California CBDA All-State Audition Reference Videos
Available Courses
- Beginning Bassoon Starter Series
- 2021 California All-State Middle School Etudes
- 2021 California All-State High School Etudes
Interested in learning more? Click the button below to register for courses taught by Dr. Patterson.