Australian Lorelei Dowling, bassoonist, is a world-renowned contemporary specialist. Since winning a position in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra aged 24, she has appeared with many esteemed ensembles including Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Mozarteum Orchestra, RSO Wien, Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Esbjerg Ensemble, Musikfabrik, Lausanne and Munich Chamber Orchestras and Burgtheater Wien. She has been a member of Klangforum Wien for over two decades.
Lorelei Dowling has given lecture-recitals all over the world, most notably at the Manhattan School of Music, Moscow Conservatorium, Singapore University, Venice Conservatoire, Paris Conservatoire, Hong Kong bassoon society, Vietnam National Academy of Music, Royal Northern College of Music and for the International Double Reed Society in Ithaca, Wisconsin and Birmingham. She has been the international guest bassoonist for the British Double Reed Society conference and Opatija 72nd Music Festival. From 2013-2019 Dowling was the bassoon instrumental lecturer for the Master’s in Composition at Katarina Gurska Centre for Music, Madrid, Spain.
In addition to being the first bassoonist to play the Jolivet Bassoon Concerto with a major Australian orchestra, she premiered Berio’s Sequenza XII for solo bassoon in Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong and Russia. She has premiered new solo works from Pierluigi Billone, George Aperghis, Georg Friederich Haas, Liza Lim, Alberto Posadas, Mark Andre and Johannes Maria Staud and as a soloist has recorded for Kairos, Wergo, ABC Classics, and TYX Art.
Her CD of compiled radio recordings, I was like WOW (2017), was reviewed as ‘grandiose’, ‘flawless’, and ‘full of expression’ (Das Orchester), and her performance on the album was called ‘jaw-droppingly brilliant’ (MusicWeb International).
Dowling is currently completing her doctoral studies in artistic research on the contraforte at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Austria. She has given presentations on her subject at the 2019 European Platform for Artistic Research in Music conference in Cluj, Romania and the 2021 Doctors in Performance conference in Estonia. Since 2018, she has been Guest Faculty at the Lucerne Festival Academy. In 2020, she started teaching contrabassoon at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK), Austria. In addition, Dowling is a mentor of the Grafenegg Academy. She is currently on the board of commissions and grants for the International Double Reed Society (based in the USA), and serves as the chair for its Norma Hooks Young Artist International Competition for the period 2024-27.