William Winstead

William Winstead is the principal bassoonist at the Marlboro Music Festival under Pablo Casals, and is currently senior faculty member at the Spoleto, Italy's Festival of Two Worlds, Aspen Music Festival and the Sarasota Music Festival. He was a soloist with Pittsburgh Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony, as well as recitalist for conferences of the International Double Reed Society for which he was past president. He gives master classes and appearances as a soloist throughout the U.S. and is a member of the National Endowment for the Arts Music Advisory Panel for Solo Recitalist Grants. As a composer, he has enjoyed premieres of major works by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and in 1976 received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for a bicentennial work for narrator and orchestra. His 'Concerto for Bassoon' was an award winner in the George Eastman Prize Competition. A former faculty member at Oberlin Conservatory, Florida State University and West Virginia University, he currently is the principal bassoonist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.