Dr. Alex Widstrand

Dr. Alex Widstrand is Lecturer of Bassoon at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He previously served as bassoon instructor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, and holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (B.M.) and the University of Iowa (M.A., D.M.A.). He has played bassoon and contrabassoon with the Chippewa Valley Symphony Orchestra, the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, and the Des Moines Symphony. In addition to his teaching and performance work, Dr. Widstrand is an editor at the internationally renowned scholarly music publisher A-R Editions, Inc., in Middleton, Wisconsin.

A passionate advocate for new and underrepresented music, Dr. Widstrand’s performances and research seek to broaden audiences’ appreciation of the bassoon and its diverse repertoire. His current work spotlights bassoon music from marginalized populations within the former Soviet Union, particularly solo and chamber works by Baltic and Georgian composers. During his time in Iowa, Dr. Widstrand performed regularly with the University of Iowa Center for New Music and there premiered numerous new works by student, semiprofessional, and professional composers from around the world.

Dr. Widstrand specializes in the craft of critical music editing. His doctoral dissertation makes widely available for the first time an edition of the Concerto for Bassoon and String Orchestra (1970) by Lev Konstantinovich Knipper, a neglected masterwork of the Soviet Russian repertoire. Two of Dr. Widstrand’s editions, which feature previously unpublished nineteenth-century bassoon music by Josef Vendelín Hájek and Alexander Stadtfeld, are currently in preparation with Greenway Music Press.