Oboist Kyle Bruckmann tramples genre boundaries in widely ranging work as a composer/performer, educator, classical freelancer and new music specialist. His creative output – extending from conservatory-trained foundations into gray areas encompassing electro-acoustics, free jazz, post-punk rock, and the noise underground – can be heard on more than 80 recordings from labels including New World, Hat Art, Carrier, New Focus, Entr’acte, Clean Feed, Another Timbre, and Sick Room. His ensemble affiliations include Splinter Reeds, sfSound, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Eco Ensemble, the Stockton Symphony, and Quinteto Latino.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003, he has performed as a substitute with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras while remaining active within an international community of improvisers and sound artists. From 1996 until his Western relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago’s thriving experimental music scene. The most significant projects he has led or collaboratively founded include Degradient, EKG, Lozenge, and Wrack. He currently teaches at University of the Pacific, UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis as well as Berkeley.
Bruckmann earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Masters degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.