Brad Balliett, bassoon (Westborough, MA), is a New York City-based musician who maintains an active and busy schedule as a composer, bassoonist, speaker, teaching artist, and poet. Principal bassoon of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Brad is an artistic director for the chamber music collective Decoda (Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall). Brad has also performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Musicians, New York City Ballet, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Festival performances include Marlboro, Tanglewood, June in Buffalo, Newport Jazz Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, and the Lucerne Festival. As a composer, Brad has witnessed and participated in premieres of his orchestral, chamber, choral, and operatic works. Recent commissions have come from Carnegie Hall, Cecelia Chorus, Metropolis Ensemble, and Notre Dame University. With his twin brother, Doug, Brad is on faculty at The Juilliard School (Evening Division), and has presented lectures for Carnegie Hall. As a teaching artist, Brad regularly leads composition and song-writing workshops in prisons, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters, both for Carnegie Hall and their Affiliate Ensemble, Decoda. He is a faculty member for Musicambia at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Brad graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2005, and holds an MM from Rice University. Past Yellow Barn musician 2017.