About

Will Hartley is a Bassoonist and Contrabassoonist studying at the Royal Northern College of Music under the tutelage of Graham Salvage, Stefano Canuti and Simon Davies. Will is a very passionate player who, performs a wide variety of music from historically informed Baroque Performance to newly composed Contemporary Classical music. Before attending the Royal Northern College of Music, he studied on the Advanced Training Program at the Sage Gateshead with Andrew Jakob and Dr. Antonina Lax. He also went on to win the Principal Bassoon seat in the Young Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra where he received coaching from musicians in the Royal Northern Sinfonia. At Sage Gateshead he was fortunate enough to receive and participate in masterclasses with Martin Gatt, Sarah Burnett and Stephen Raey and Robin Kennard. He was also Principal Bassoon of the Tees Valley Youth Orchestra, an outstanding ensemble of talented players tackling repertoire by Mahler, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky and his time with the orchestra culminated in a hugely successful performance in New York's Carnegie Hall.

At the RNCM he has developed his control of the Bassoon exploring a very wide variety of repertoire and studying very methodically under Graham Salvage, enhancing his ability and enabling him to communicate to the audience through the instrument, and studying historical aspects of Baroque repertoire with Stefano Canuti who is one of the world's leading bassoon soloists, and regularly with newly appointed bassoon tutor, Andrea Zucco. He has participated in the concerto competition with repertoire by Mozart and Weber, and side by side with BBC Philharmonic and players from the Royal Northern Sinfonia. At the end of his first year at the RNCM, he went to Switzerland to study with Simon Van Holen. In intense masterclasses at the Musikinsel Rheinau, he further developed his solo and chamber music skills performing the Weber Concerto and Tansman Sonatine as well as performing with students and tutors on the course, namely Ivan Podyomov, Sarah Rumer, Bernhard Rothlisberger and Olivier Darbellay.

Will is generously supported by the John Fewkes Instrumental Scholarship and plays a Moosmann model 200 bassoon.