Mr. Blair Bollinger
Bass Trombone, Philadelphia Orchestra

Blair Bollinger enjoys a varied musical career as a trombonist, a conductor and a teacher. He is the Bass Trombonist of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1986 at the invitation of Music Director Riccardo Muti and enjoys the full Orchestra schedule of more than 160 concerts each year along with many recordings and international tours.

As a soloist, Mr. Bollinger has performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony of Taiwan and others. . He has performed recitals and given master classes in Brazil, Chile, China, Holland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Poland, Taiwan and throughout the United States. Mr. Bollinger has been featured at multiple international and domestic brass conferences. As a student, he won the 1986 Philadelphia Orchestra Greenfield Competition and remains the only trombonist to win this competition since it began in 1934, as well as the only bass trombone soloist ever with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In March 2007 he performed the World Premiere of a Bass Trombone Concerto written for him by Philadelphia composer Jay Krush with the US Army Orchestra at the Eastern Trombone Workshop.

Mr. Bollinger's recordings include a solo disc, "Fancy Free", for d'Note Records, hailed by American Record Guide as "The recording I’ve been waiting for ... an amazing display of Bollinger’s virtuoso skills." Other recordings are 2 discs with his trombone quartet "Four of a Kind" and a Gabrieli disc with the Canadian Brass. With "Four of a Kind", Mr. Bollinger has toured Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the U.S. and appeared at several trombone conferences. An active arranger, his arrangements of music for various string and brass ensembles are published by Alphonse Leduc in Paris, Ensemble Publications in New York and Southern Music in Texas.

Mr. Bollinger is the founding Music Director of the Bar Harbor Brass Week in Maine where he conducts, performs and teaches each summer. He is a frequent guest conductor with the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia and leads the Curtis Brass and Percussion Ensemble. Mr. Bollinger also has conducted concerts with his daughter, Robyn, as a violin soloist both in Philadelphia and with the DeKalb (GA) Symphony.

A 1986 graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, he studied with Charles Vernon and Glenn Dodson. Mr. Bollinger is now on faculty at Curtis and Temple University. In addition to teaching lessons, he conducts repertoire classes and coaches chamber music. He has spent recent summers performing and teaching in the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina and Blast of Brass Conference in Texas.