Biography

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 such as the Carmel Bach Festival, American Bach Soloists, Sinfonia Spirituosa, Sacramento Baroque Soloists, Philharmonie Austin, and the Aston Magna Music 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 an active music schol­ar, hav­ing pre­sent­ed at the con­fer­ences of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the International Double Reed Society. At Sacramento State, 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 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.

Dr. David A. Wells teach­es bas­soon and music his­to­ry at California State University, Sacramento, where he also for­mer­ly served as Co-Director of the annu­al Festival of New American Music (FeNAM). As a per­former, he plays both mod­ern and peri­od instru­ments in a wide vari­ety of ensem­bles and styles. On mod­ern bas­soon, he free­lances with orches­tras through­out Northern California, col­lab­o­rates with col­leagues in cham­ber groups, and plays with the swing sex­tet Hot Club Faux Gitane. On Baroque bas­soon, he has recent­ly per­formed with the American Bach Soloists, Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver, BC), Sacramento Baroque Soloists, Capella Antiqua, at the Carmel Bach Festival, and is a found­ing mem­ber of Sinfonia Spirituosa.

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, on top­ics includ­ing the his­to­ry of the bas­soon in jazz, redis­cov­er­ing the bas­soon­ist who first played the Rite of Spring solo, the effects of World War I on American orches­tras, and cross-gen­der cast­ing in the operas of Lully and Rameau.

Wells holds both a D.M.A. in Bassoon Performance and an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and pre­vi­ous­ly 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 swim­ming, tak­ing pho­tographs, col­lect­ing records, and try­ing to keep up with his super-librar­i­an/u­ber-yogi wife, Veronica.

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

Links to oth­er things that I am or have been heav­i­ly involved in: