Bio : Artists

Robert Nairn : Double Bass

Double bassist Robert Nairn?s experience covers contemporary, jazz, traditional orchestral, and historical performance ensembles, with a career that has spanned Europe, the U.S. and Australasia. His teachers have included Klaus Stoll, Tom Martin, and Max McBride. He has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfoniett, and The Melbourne Symphony. He has acted as guest principal bassist with the Halle Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and held the position of principal bass with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. In the historical performance world he holds the position of principal double bass with the Handel Haydn Society in Boston, MA; he is a member of Juilliard Baroque; and has also worked with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, Concerto Caledonia, Washington Bach Consort, the Aulos Ensemble, Rebel, BEMF, the English Baroque Soloists, Florilegium, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has performed recitals in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. Mr. Nairn is active in commissioning new works and has premiered more than forty compositions for both solo bass and chamber music featuring the bass. In 2009 he premiered a new concerto by Barry Conyngham, and his first solo CD of music by Australian composers is due for release shortly. As a soloist, he has performed concerti with the Australian Chamber, Adelaide, and Darwin symphony orchestras (including Bottesini's Passiona Amoroso with Gary Karr). Robert Nairn is professor of double bass at Penn State University and is on the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York. He is president of the International Society of Bassists and hosted the Society?s 2009 convention at Penn State. In 2008 he was awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship. This is his second season with EMF.