A founding member and former artistic director for the chamber music collective Decoda, Brad Balliett has been appointed bassoon instructor at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University.
Balliett performs with the leading new music groups in New York, including Signal, Metropolis Ensemble, and Deviant Septet, and is principal bassoon of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. As soloist, he has performed concertos with the Houston Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble, Experiential Orchestra, and the Johannesburg and KZN Philharmonic Orchestras (South Africa). He has also performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Musicians, New York City Ballet, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and has enjoyed summers at music festivals including Marlboro, Tanglewood, June in Buffalo, Newport Jazz Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, and the Lucerne Festival.
Balliett teaches at The Juilliard School (Evening Division), and regularly leads composition and song-writing workshops in prisons, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters, both for Carnegie Hall and their Affiliate Ensemble, Decoda. He is a faculty member for Musicambia at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Balliett graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2005, and holds an MM from Rice University.