Michael Sweeney has served as Principal Bassoonist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since 1989.nneth Klein basson fagotto

As a soloist, Michael has a great interest in Early and Post-Modern music. He has performed the concertos and concertante works of Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart and Strauss as well as 20-21st c. solo works by Canadian composers Marjan Mozetich, Rodney Sharman and Rudolf Komorous, and American composer Michael Welsh.modern

Among his many chamber music collaborations, Michael has performed the piano quintets of Mozart and Beethoven with pianists Emmanuel Ax, Patricia Parr, Angela Hewitt, Ingrid Fliter, John Perry and Serouj Kradjian, and was a founding member of the quartet of bassoonists, Caliban. He is also a frequent guest of Amici. He performed Glenn Gould's Bassoon Sonata with pianist Patricia Parr at the international conference marking both the 60th anniversary of the composer's birth and the opening of Glenn Gould Studio at CBC Centre/Toronto.

Michael's musicological activities have included the preparatioin of a performing edition for the TSO of instrumental excerpts from Jean-Philippe Rameau's last opera, and he is currently working on the commentary to his own critical/performing edition of Mozart's Concerto for the Bassoon.

Prior to joining the TSO, Michael studied with Kay Brightman, Norman Herzberg, and Arthur Weisberg at state universities in California and New York, the University of Southern California, and the Yale School of Music, where he also studied musicianship with Joan Panetti. During his student years, Michael was principal bassoonist of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra and the American Youth Symphony (Mehli Mehta, conductor), and was a fellow of the Tanglewood_Music_Center. In his early professional years, Michael performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under Charles Dutoit. Before joining the TSO, Michael was the principal bassoonist of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra for two seasons.

Michael has performed and taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Glickman Popkin Bassoon Camp, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and PRISM (Powell River, BC). He also teaches at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and at the Faculty of Music at University of Toronto.

Michael's bassoon is a custom-made instrument manufactured by the world-renown bassoon maker Wilhelm Heckel (est. 1831, Wiesbaden-Biebrich, Germany) featuring many mechanical and ergonomic innovations of his own conception and design. He continues his work innovating the mechanisms of his instrument with master musical instrument technicians Frank Marcus, Shane Wieler, Greg James, and Keith Bowen.

Michael is married to Peter Eliot Weiss, who is a writer and a professor of communications in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Toronto.

Michael Sweeney a été nommé basson solo de l'Orchestre symphonique de Toronto en 1989 après avoir occupé le même poste pendant deux saisons au South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.

Il poursuit également une carrière de soliste et s'intéresse particulièrement aux œuvres baroques, classiques et post-modernes. Il a joué en concert des concertos de Vivaldi, Mozart, Weber et du compositeur canadien Rudolf Komorous, en plus d'œuvres concertantes de Haydn, Richard Strauss et Frank Martin, et créera en juin 2003 un concerto de Marjan Mozetich avec l'ensemble The Seiler Strings.

Lors d'une de ses nombreuses participations aux concerts de la série Evening Overture de l'Orchestre symphonique de Toronto, il a interprété les quintettes de Mozart et de Beethoven avec le pianiste Emmanuel Ax. Il est membre fondateur du quatuor de bassons Caliban et a interprété la sonate pour basson de Glenn Gould avec Patricia Parr lors de la conférence internationale marquant le 60e anniversaire de naissance du compositeur en 1992. Michael Sweeney est également actif au sein du Bach Consort, un ensemble coopératif de chanteurs et instrumentistes qui joue pour le bénéfice d'organismes de charité de Toronto.

Son intérêt pour la musicologie l'a amené à arranger des extraits du dernier opéra de Rameau pour l'Orchestre symphonique de Toronto et il prépare une édition commentée du concerto de Mozart basée sur l'édition originale et sur d'autres œuvres contemporaines.

Michael Sweeney est détenteur d'une Maîtrise en musique à la State University of New York (Stony Brook) et a également travaillé auprès des bassonistes Norman Herzberg à la University of Southern California, Kay Brightman à la California State University (Fullerton), et Arthur Weisberg à Stony Brook et à la Yale School of Music, où il a également complété sa formation musicale avec Joan Panetti.

Trad. par André Papillon.