Gustavo Núñez Rodríguez

He was born in Montevideo (Uruguay) in 1965. Coming from a family of musicians, he obtained his first knowledge of solfeggio and violin at a very early age. From the age of 11, he began to dedicate himself to his true vocation: the bassoon, an instrument he learned from his father, a bassoonist in Venezuela. Shortly after, he joined the now famous Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Caracas. Years later, in 1981, he moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music with Kerry Camden, and in 1984 he joined the prestigious class of Professor Klaus Thunemann at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Hanover (Germany), where he graduated in 1988. During his studies he was awarded prizes at the Geneva International Music Competition (Prix Suisse) and at the “Carl Maria von Weber” Competition in Munich (First Prize), both in 1987. In 1988, the year of his graduation, he became principal bassoon in the Orchestra of the Darmstadt Theatre (Germany), and in 1989 he was appointed soloist of the Bamberg Symphony, where he was based until 1995. He has recorded the works for bassoon by Mozart, Vivaldi, Devienne, Villa-Lobos and Gubaidulina, with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields on different CDs that are available on Channel-Classics and Pentatone. He has been principal bassoon of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam since 1995, and since 1999 he has been a professor at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf. He has also been a professor in the Bassoon Department of the Reina Sofía School of Music since 2016.