Fraser Jackson joined the Toronto Symphony as Contrabassoonist in 1990. Previously, he was the Second Bassoon in l'Orchestre symphonique de Québec. In recent years he has performed and toured with the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington DC), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. As a chamber musician, he has performed with such groups as l'Ensemble Pentaedre, Soundstreams, Amici and New Music Concerts. He has performed recently at such festivals as the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, Toronto's Summerworks Theatre Festival, and England's Buxton Festival. Besides the Caliban Quartet, Fraser is a regular member of Musica Franca, a group specializing in the French Baroque, and the TSO Wind Trio which performs regularly in Toronto-area schools. Fraser also performs on period contrabassoons, having performed with Toronto's Aradia Baroque Orchestra in recent recordings for the Naxos label, and with the Montreal Baroque Band.
Fraser teaches bassoon and chamber music at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music and at the University of Toronto and teaches in the summers at CAMMAC and at the Interprovincial Music Camp in Ontario. In the past, he has taught at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, at le Festival de la Domaine Forget, at the Camp Musical des Laurentides, and was a coach with the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. In July, 2002, he was the artist-in-residence at the 5th International Contrabassoon Festival in Park City, Utah.
A native of Ottawa, he obtained his music degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he was one of the last students to graduate from the studio of Norman Herzberg. His hobbies include cooking, home renovations, and arranging music for odd combinations of instruments... like bassoon quartets.
