Dr Lorelei L. Dowling is a world-renowned bassoonist, contrabassoonist, and contrafortist, acclaimed for her pioneering work in contemporary music. Since winning her first orchestral position with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 24, she has performed with major ensembles including the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Mozarteum Orchestra, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Esbjerg Ensemble (Denmark), Musikfabrik (Cologne), and both the Lausanne and Munich Chamber Orchestras.
Since 1994, she has been the solo bassoonist of Klangforum Wien (Austria), one of the world's leading ensembles for contemporary music. As a soloist, she has appeared internationally and premiered Jolivet’s Bassoon Concerto with a major Australian orchestra. She was also the first bassoonist to perform Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XII in Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Russia. In 2021, she premiered Georg Friedrich Haas' Was mir Beethoven erzählt for contraforte, violin (Caroline Widmann) and chamber orchestra (Basel) - a notable contribution to the solo contraforte repertoire.
Her discography includes solo recordings for Kairos, Wergo, ABC Classics and TYX Art with works such as Aperghis' Tag ohne Nacht (solo contraforte), Neuwirth's Torsion (solo bassoon), Liza Lim's Axis Mundi and Elena Kats-Chernin's Nonchalance, Afterwards and Slicked Back Tango for bassoon and piano. Her CD of compiled radio recordings I was like WOW was lauded as "grandiose", "flawless" and "stunningly brilliant".
She has premiered solo works by some of the most significant composers of our time, including Pierluigi Billone, Georges Aperghis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Liza Lim, Alberto Posadas, Mark Andre and Johannes Maria Staud.
Lorelei Dowling is also a dedicated educator and mentor. From 2013 to 2019, she served as bassoon lecturer for the Master’s in Composition at the Katarina Gurska Centre for Music in Madrid. Since 2018, she has been Guest Faculty at the Lucerne Festival Academy and was a mentor at the 2024 Grafenegg Academy. She currently teaches bassoon in the Performance Practice in Contemporary Music (PPCM) program at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz (KUG), and teaches contrabassoon and contraforte at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien (MUK).
Her commitment to the global double reed community is reflected in her service on the Commissions and Grants Committee of the International Double Reed Society (IDRS, USA) from 2021–2024. She currently serves as Chair of the IDRS Norma Hooks Young Artist International Competition for Bassoon.
Dr. Dowling completed her doctorate in 2025 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with distinction. Her dissertation Developing the Contraforte for Twenty-first-century Ensemble Playing is one of the first in-depth investigations into this emerging instrument. She presented her research at the 2019 AEC Conference in Romania and at the 2021 Doctors in Performance Conference in Estonia.
In addition to her work as a performer, teacher and researcher, she is also active as a composer. Her compositions and thesis can be accessed at contemporary-contraforte.com.