Colin HEMMINGSEN

Colin Hemmingsen (Executant Diploma of Music, Auckland University, NZ (1968), Master of Music, New England Conservatory, USA (1973).

Hemmingsen has had a dual jazz/classical career for more than 30 years and until 1992 was the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s principal bassoonist. He won a Downbeat scholarship on tenor saxophone in 1970 to study jazz at Berklee College of Music and was subsequently awarded a scholarship to New England Conservatory. There, he completed a Master’s degree in bassoon with Sherman Walt as his teacher. After teaching and performing in the United States (freelancing with the Boston Philharmonia and Opera and ballet companies and had a one-year position at Virginia Commonwealth University in a resident wind quintet), he returned to New Zealand to work with the NZSO and also establish the country’s first jazz school. He has been involved in jazz education since the mid-1970s and founded the NZ Jazz Foundation in 1980.

GRAHAM REID PROFILES COLIN HEMMINGSEN