Dana Jessen is a San Francisco-based bassoon soloist, chamber musician, improviser and composer. Hailed as performing with “conviction and authenticity” (Boston Music Intelligencer), she has collaborated with composers, improvisers, visual artists, robots, poets, filmmakers and chamber musicians around the world. Dana is co-founder of the EAR Duo and has performed with the Lucky Dragons, Amsterdam Contemporary Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Harvard Group for New Music, Mobtown Modern, Bik Bent Braam Ensemble, Calefax Quintet, Braam/de Joode/Vatcher Trio and the Het Ensemble. She is the founder and artistic director of the New Music Bassoon Fund, an organization dedicated to expanding the current bassoon repertoire through consortium commissioning projects. Through this ground breaking organization, she has recently invited thirty bassoonists from all over the world to participate in the project's first commission, an hour-long composition for seven amplified bassoons by composer Michael Gordon.
Dana's recent performance highlights include appearances at Brooklyn's Roulette, the On Wings Festival of Wind Music in the Netherlands, Belgium's Logos Foundation, Berlin's Universität der Künste, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Lisbon’s Musicbox Nightclub, New York City’s The Stone, Oslo’s Sound of Mu, and Amsterdam's World Minimal Music Festival at the Muziekgebouw aan' t IJ. She has been artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Amsterdam's STEIM, De Lindenberg Productiehuis, and the Omi International Arts Center. Her recordings as a bassoonist and improviser can be heard on RIOJA, Evil Rabbit and the New World record labels.
As a composer, Dana’s music utilizes everything from graphic notation to electroacoustic environments and has been performed by ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. Her compositions have been praised as "astonishing" and "extremely engaging" by Vermont’s Point Scene Blank, and recently earned her 1st Prize at the Electric LaTex Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Dana has recently been appointed to the 2012 summer faculty at the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire where she will teach classes for pre-college students in composition, improvisation and instrumentation.
Dana holds a M.M. in Bassoon Performance with academic honors from the New England Conservatory of Music and a M.M. in Improvisation from the Artez Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in the Netherlands. She lived in Amsterdam for three years as the recipient of a 2009-2011 HSP Huygens Fellowship and 2008-2009 J. William Fulbright Fellowship where she researched contemporary and improvised music.