John Kendall Bailey, oboe Co-Winner Khuner Young Artist Concerto Competition 1991-1992
John Kendall Bailey (oboe) is likely the most familiar to Bay Area audiences of all the winners of the Khuner Concerto Competition. He was named co-winner in 1992 and has gone on to a multi-faceted career as a conductor, performer, composer, lecturer and music critic.
Most recently John (also known as Jack) has served as Music Director and Conductor of the Mesopotamia Symphony Orchestra in San Jose; Music Director, Principal Conductor and Chorus Master of Trinity Lyric Opera; and Associate Conductor of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra; Music Director, Principal Conductor and Chorus Master of Trinity Lyric Opera; and Associate Conductor of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.
Back in 1994, only a couple of years after winning our competition for teenagers, he founded the Berkeley Lyric Opera and served as its Music Director and Conductor until 2001. Since then he has served as Principal Conductor of Oakland Youth Orchestra, Music Director of Voices of Musica Sacra, Chorus Master of Festival Opera Chorus, and Guest Conductor with Oakland East Bay Symphony, Diablo Symphony Orchestra, Oakland Ballet, Festival Opera, UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, UC Davis Chorus, Opera San Jose Chorus, Oakland School for the Arts, the Crowden School, Dominican University, and numerous others. He has taught conducting at the University of California at Davis and Notre Dame de Namur University.
He maintains a busy performance schedule as a bass-baritone, oboist and pianist, having performed with the Prometheus Symphony, of course, but then over the years with the San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland, Berkeley, Redding, Napa, and Sacramento symphonies, American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Midsummer Mozart and West Marin music festivals, San Francisco Bach Choir, Coro Hispano de San Francisco, Berkeley Opera and many other regional groups. He has recorded for the Harmonia Mundi, Koch International, Pro Musica, Wildboar, Centaur, and Angelus Music labels.
As a composer, his works have been performed and commissioned in the Bay Area and abroad. Audiences also know him as the pre-performance lecturer for the Oakland East Bay Symphony and the San Francisco Opera, and also as a music critic for the San Francisco Classical Voice and writer of real-time commentary for the Concert Companion. (Resume updated by Concerto Committee in 2016)
