Marc Vallon | Bassoon

Marc Vallon has been Professor of Music, Bassoon at the UW-Madison since 2004. A native of France, Vallon studied at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, an institution he joined in 1992 as Professor of Early Bassoon. He started playing professionally at the age of 18 during his conservatory studies and joined the Paris-based Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, performing under many renowned conductors including Sergiu Celibidache, Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Karl Boehm, and Lorin Maazel.

Soon afterward Vallon’s interests led him to the numerous smaller Parisian groups specializing in contemporary music. He was a founding member of the Nielsen Quintet in 1975, with which he played hundreds of concerts devoted largely to 20th-century repertoire. He also collaborated with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Pierre Boulez, and took part in the first performance of Boulez’s major work, Répons. Concurrently, he earned a degree in philosophy at the Paris-Sorbonne.

Marc Vallon was one of the pioneers of the early music movement in the 1980s. He was principal bassoonist with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra for more than 20 years and performed with other leading early music ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Arts Florissants, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Tafelmusik. His personal collection of early instruments includes originals and copies of instruments from 1670 to 1920.

Vallon has taught modern and baroque bassoon at the Paris Conservatory and the Lyon Conservatory and has given master classes worldwide. His name can be found on more than one hundred commercial recordings, among them his acclaimed rendering of the Mozart bassoon concerto with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.