Contributor
Colin Hemmingsen
Composer, Jazz Composer, Performer
Biography
Colin Hemmingsen (Executant Diploma of Music, Auckland University, NZ (1968), Master of Music, New England Conservatory, USA (1973).
Hemmingsen has had a dual jazz/classical career for more than 30 years and until 1992 was New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s principal bassoonist. He won a Downbeat scholarship on tenor saxophone in 1970 to study jazz at Berklee College of Music and was subsequently awarded a scholarship to New England Conservatory. There he completed a Masters degree in bassoon with Sherman Walt as his teacher. After teaching and performing in the United States (freelance with the Boston Philharmonia and Opera and ballet companies and a one year position at Virginal Commonwealth University in a resident woowind quintet) he returned to New Zealand to work with the NZSO and also establish the country’s first jazz school. He has been involved in jazz education since the mid-1970s and founded the NZ Jazz Foundation in 1980.
Hemmingsen is a Senior Lecturer in Jazz studies at the NZ School of Music, Wellington.