The Dorian Wind Quintet has announced that bassoonist Jane Taylor, a founding member of the group, has retired after 40 seasons with the ensemble. Taylor has been with the group since its formation at Tanglewood in 1961. During that time, the Quintet has toured the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, performing thousands of concerts. With Taylor, the group has made numerous recordings, including its most recent release A Day in the Forest Of Dreams, and has commissioned major new works for wind quintet, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Quintet No.4 of George Perle.

In Taylor's 40 years with the group, she has seen it all: has been detained by soldiers in the Congo; has had luggage, complete with music and concert clothes arrive just after the concert; and even had to leave one performance early under police escort when concertgoers expecting a jazz ensemble nearly rioted!

Taylor's last concert performance with the Quintet was in Kingston, NY on Sunday, April 14, the final concert of the ensemble's 40th anniversary season. To celebrate the anniversary, the Quintet commissioned a set of variations by Richard Rodney Bennett, George Perle, Billy Childs, Bruce Adolphe, and Lee Hoiby on a theme from Antonin Reicha's Wind Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 88 No. 2, a staple of the wind quintet repertoire. The new work, Anniversary Variations on a Theme of Reicha, was made possible with generous grants from the NEA, NYSCA and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. The work was also performed in Melbourne and Jacksonville, FL in April and will be heard at the Round Top Festival in June, 2002.

Taylor graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Queens College where she was a student of Bernard Garfield of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Harold Goltzer of the New York Philharmonic and is a member of the American Symphony Orchestra and Long Island Philharmonic. She has performed with scores of organizations in the greater New York area and is on the faculties of Mannes College, Brooklyn College, and Montclair State College.

Looking back, Taylor comments "We were extremely idealistic in 1961 when we formed the Dorian Quintet with the goal of raising the standard of wind playing in the United States. That really was our naive plan. Now, forty years later, I believe we have succeeded; not single-handedly, of course. The Dorian has continued to "raise the bar" of musical performance throughout these forty years. Our performances and recordings represent our musical values, and through them we have become a standard by which wind quintets are judged. This accomplishment makes me very proud."

Composer Bruce Adolphe, a two-time Quintet commissionee, writes, "The last few seasons have seen some of the pillars of American chamber music leave their ensembles. First, Robert Mann left the Juilliard Quartet, then David Soyer bid farewell to the Guarneri, and now Jane Taylor retires from the Dorian Quintet. I am not even sure what Jane looks like without a bassoon in her hands, or even standing up, for that matter. Like the NYC Ballet without Balanchine or the Tonight Show without Johnny Carson, the Dorian Quintet will continue not despite but because of the person leaving -- because they created not a dance troupe, a TV show, or an wind ensemble, but an American institution."

Ethan Bauch has been named Taylor's successor. Bauch, a graduate of The Juilliard School, made his New York debut as soloist at the age of 19 with The New York Philharmonic in a nationally televised Young People's Concert under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. He has been soloist with numerous other organizations since, in addition to performing with dozens of orchestras for symphony, opera and ballet, and Broadway shows. He has also served on the boards of the Recording Musicians Association and the Coalition for the Advancement of Live Music and has published numerous articles about the business of music and the social benefits of music education.

Other members of the Quintet are Gretchen Pusch, flute; Gerard Reuter, oboe; Jerry Kirkbride, clarinet; and Nancy Billmann, horn.

Listen to Jane Taylor's final performance with the renowned wind ensemble on National Public Radio's Performance Today.