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George Etheridge

For more than thirty years, George Etheridge has enjoyed a varied and distinguished career as a conductor, performer and educator in the metropolitan Washington area. Educated at the University of Michigan and the Paris Conservatory, Mr. Etheridge first came to the Washington area as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Maryland. He has performed as a Saxophone soloist at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Constitution Hall, The Smithsonian Institute and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Mr. Etheridge also served as the director for the acclaimed Fort Hunt High School Band for eight years. During his tenure at Fort Hunt, the band was invited to perform at the prestigious Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic and Convention in Chicago, IL (1980).

Following his time at Fort Hunt, Mr. Etheridge served as the director of Bands at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, VA for six years.

Currently, Mr. Etheridge is conductor of the Capital Wind Symphony and was invited once again to perform at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago (1994). Mr. Etheridge has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Catholic University of America, George Mason University, Federal City College and Howard University.

Glenn Quader

A native of Washington, D.C., Glenn Quader is quickly gaining national recognition as a dynamic and versatile young American conductor. Mr. Quader studied at the Peabody Conservatory and the Universities of Indiana, Illinois, and Miami. He works extensively as a conductor, performer, and session musician in the U.S. and Europe and is equally adept in the classical, jazz and popular idioms, placing him in extremely high demand on the concert stage as well as in the recording studio.

Currently Mr. Quader serves as Music Director for the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Conductor of the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Quader's conducting appearances have included the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony, Brasov Philharmonic (Romania), Bacau Philharmonic (Sicily), White Noise Chamber Players - Ensemble in Residence with the New World Symphony, Czech Virtuosi, Czech Moravian Chamber Orchestra, and the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra (Hungary).

David McGill

Appointed principal bassoon in 1996 by former CSO music director Daniel Barenboim, bassoonist/author David McGill began his tenure with the CSO in the fall of 1997. He came here from the Cleveland Orchestra, where he had been principal bassoon since 1988. Prior to that, he was principal bassoon of the Toronto Symphony from 1985 to 1988, and principal bassoon of the Tulsa Philharmonic from 1980 to 1981.

David has appeared as soloist with the CSO, including at Carnegie Hall in 2005 and with John Williams in performances of his concerto for bassoon, "The Five Sacred Trees." He has also performed as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the Oklahoma Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Annapolis Symphony, Orchestra London, Symphony New Brunswick, the Colorado Philharmonic and the student orchestras of the Curtis and Cleveland institutes of music. He was principal bassoon of the World Orchestra for Peace in 1995 and the Solti Orchestral Project at Carnegie Hall in 1994, both under the direction of Sir Georg Solti. He has also performed at the Marlboro, Tanglewood, Colorado Philharmonic (now National Repertory Orchestra) and Aspen music festivals.

Born in 1963, David is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father is a retired architect and his mother a retired church organist and piano teacher. After hearing Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," David began his musical studies on the clarinet at the age of 11. Soon afterward, he decided to switch to the bassoon. David began private studies with Jane Orzel, principal bassoon of the Tulsa Philharmonic, and, when she left the orchestra during his senior year of high school, he won her position.

He holds a bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music (1985), where his teachers included Sol Schoenbach, John de Lancie and John Minsker. In 1983, he won first prize in the Fernand Gillet Competition sponsored by the International Double Reed Society.

David was a recipient of the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's recording of Strauss Wind Concertos. Among his other recordings are "Musique Française" with oboist Alfred Genovese and pianist Peter Serkin, "Orchestral Excerpts for Bassoon" (a teaching CD), and Mozart's Bassoon Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1994, he gave the world premiere of Oskar Morawetz's Concerto for Bassoon and Chamber Orchestra, which was written for him, and in 1996, he performed in the American premiere of Jean Françaix's Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano at the International Double Reed Society's convention. He has given master classes in Canada, Finland, Hungary and throughout the United States. He has taught at the University of Toronto, the Cleveland Institute of Music and DePaul and Roosevelt universities in Chicago. During the 2003-04 season, while on sabbatical from the CSO, he taught at Indiana University.

David is the author of a book about musical phrasing entitled "Sound in Motion," published in fall 2007 by Indiana University Press, and he is currently composing 19th-century-style accompaniments for the most famous bassoon etude book, "50 Concert Studies for Bassoon" by Ludwig Milde.

David enjoys listening to vintage recordings, especially those of soprano Maria Callas and Fritz Kreisler; reading biographies; driving his 1923 Model T Ford; watching vintage movies, especially those of Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy; and studying about Abraham Lincoln. He is proud to be living in the "Land of Lincoln" with his partner Fredy Perez and his cat, Stanley.