UGA Bassoon and Oboe Symposium

Amy Pollard is the Professor of Bassoon and Associate Director for Performance at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia. She formerly served as Lecturer of Bassoon at Baylor University and has also been on faculty at the University of Dayton and the Cincinnati School for the Creative and Performing Arts. During the summer she has been on the faculty of the Interlochen Arts Center Advanced Bassoon Institute, the UGA Study Abroad program in Alessandria, Italy, the Saarburg Music Festival in Saarburg, Germany, and the Atlanta Chamber Music Festival. She has taught master classes at conservatories and universities throughout the United States and internationally as well as serving as a guest artist for numerous double reed festivals and clinics.  

Pollard holds positions as principal bassoon with the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra and second bassoon with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. She is an active freelance performer with orchestras throughout the country including the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Greenville Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Symphony Orchestra Augusta, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. Pollard also serves on the administrative board for the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition and Symposium as part of the Competition Committee. 

Pollard has presented solo recitals at venues across the country and internationally and has performed as a soloist with the University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, and Wind Symphony as well as with the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Chamber Players. An avid chamber musician, she has performed at venues throughout the country and also in Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, Italy, and Germany with such groups as the Georgia Woodwind Quintet, the Baylor University Woodwind Quintet, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Woodwind Quintet, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Chamber Players. Her bassoon-percussion duo, Col Legno and her bassoon duo, Dueaux, have performed recitals and presented master classes at numerous venues throughout the country. 

Pollard’s debut solo album, Ruminations: Bassoon Works of Eugène Bozza, and the Georgia Woodwind Quintet’s CD Chroma were both released by Mark Records and are available on iTunes.   

Pollard received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Louisiana State University, studying with William Winstead and William Ludwig. 

Reid Messich serves as Professor of Oboe at the University of Georgia where he is an active member of the Georgia Woodwind Quintet. Messich also serves as Co-Principal Oboist with Memphis’s IRIS Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Michael Stern and as the Principal Oboist of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro John Morris Russel. Each year during the summer months, Messich serves as instructor of oboe and woodwind literature at the MasterWorks Music Festival. In demand, Messich maintains an active international and national performance career as an orchestral musician, soloist, and clinician. He has presented recitals and been a guest artist at the International Double Reed Society on numerous occasions. Under the direction of Joseph Silverstein, he toured Japan and in 2017 Messich performed and taught at the Harbin Summer Music Festival in China.  

Messich has performed with many of the world’s greatest musical artists and has played under the baton of prestigious conductors such as Christoph von Dohnanyi, Christoph Eschenbach, Otto-Werner Mueller, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Simon Rattle, David Robertson, Mstislav Rostropovich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Robert Spano, Yuri Temirkanov, and Hans Vonk.

Messich records on the Mark Masters label. The CD Chroma, featuring the Georgia Woodwind Quintet, can be found on ITunes as well as his recording of Bozza’s Suite breve en trio. In 2016 he was part of the world premiere as well as recording solo artist for Christopher Stark’s, Velocity Meadows, for solo oboe, wind ensemble, and electronics. 

Messich received his Bachelor of Music degree at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music where he studied under the direction of Richard Woodhams. He received his Master of Music degree and Doctor of Music degree from the Florida State University where he studied with Dr. Eric Ohlsson. His other primary teachers include, Elaine Douvas, John Mack, and Joseph Robinson.  Messich performs on a Yamaha YOB 841 Duet Series. In his spare time Messich is an avid Pittsburgh Steeler fan and enjoys spending time with his wife, Kaitlin, and daughter, Lowry.

Christopher Sales is the Principal Bassoonist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and sits in the Emalee Schavel endowed chair.  He is also the Adjunct Professor of Bassoon at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  Christopher has also held Principal Bassoon positions with the Calgary Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, and Jacksonville Symphony Orchestras, and has also taught at the University of Calgary, and Jacksonville University.  Mr. Sales has played with many other institutions over the years including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Bellingham, and Aspen Music Festivals, among others.  

As a soloist, Christopher has showcased his virtuosity in concerto performances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra among others, as well as the Aspen and Eastern Music Festivals.  “It was a treat to hear the range of what is possible on this instrument,” “moving with the music, he achieved it all with an appealing effortlessness and beauty of tone,” from the Cincinnati Business Courier.  

Christopher has played many masterclasses, Chamber Music concerts, and solo recitals across North America in such venues as the Linton Chamber Music Series, Mount Royal Conservatory in Calgary, the Glenn Gould School in Toronto, The Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp, The Juilliard School, and the Spoleto Festival, among others.  He has participated in a number of recording sessions and live streams with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra including the Grammy nominated “Transatlantic.”

Richard Woodhams retired from the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2018 after having enjoyed a tenure as principal oboe since 1977, appearing as a soloist in New York, Chicago, Boston, Ann Arbor, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities in the United States as well as in Asia. He premiered several concerti in Philadelphia as well and collaborated with its last five music directors.

Mr. Woodhams taught at the Curtis Institute and Temple University and now teaches privately. His former students currently occupy positions in leading orchestras and schools both in the United States and abroad. He has given masterclasses in prominent conservatories in Canada, China, Great Britain, Israel, Taiwan, and the United States. He taught and played at the Aspen School of Music for fifteen summers and participated in many other festivals including those of La Jolla, Marlboro, Sapporo, and Sarasota. He also served on the Jury of the Munich International Oboe Competition, recorded the Strauss Oboe Concerto with Wolfgang Sawallisch, and is a charter member of The World Orchestra for Peace, an international assembly of musicians founded by Sir Georg Solti in 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

In addition to his orchestral work and teaching, Mr. Woodhams has long been active in chamber music as well and has performed with the Dover, Guarneri, Orion, and Tokyo String quartets, violinists Itzhak Perlman and Alexander Schneider, and pianists Andre Watts, Emanuel Ax, and Jean Yves Thibaudet, among many other outstanding musicians. In recent years, he has served as guest principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony with Riccardo Muti and the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Michael Tilson Thomas. In 2018, he received a citation from the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia in acknowledgement of his longstanding contribution to Philadelphia’s musical life.

Mr. Woodhams is a graduate of the Curtis Institute where he studied with John de Lancie, his distinguished predecessor in the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he began his career in the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under Walter Susskind. He has two grown sons, Louis Woodhams and Eric Woodhams, who live in St. Lous and Detroit respectively, and he is married to Kiyoko Takeuti, pianist and celesta player with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He enjoys reading about culture and politics, playing in and going to concerts of many forms of classical music, and listening to vintage jazz and swing music.