Rosie Burton

Wind Tutor & Assistant Course Director

Rosie is a professional bassoonist and teacher based on the Wirral. In her teenage years, Rosie was a member of the English Schools’ Orchestra, attending the annual courses as well as tours to Canada and Australia. She returned to the ESO as Assistant Course Director and tutoring the Wind Section. She is also Orchestral Manager and first bassoon of the English Young Artists’ Sinfonia, the professional chamber orchestra founded by Robert Pepper for alumni of the ESO.

Rosie read Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and then studied as a postgraduate at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Previously a member of the Southbank Sinfonia, a training orchestra based in London, she has subsequently gone on to have a busy freelance career as a bassoonist, working with many of the country’s major orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, the Royal Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras, the Hallé and the Northern Ballet Sinfonia. She is also principal bassoon of Covent Garden Sinfonia, with which she has performed the Hummel Bassoon Concerto and Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante and is a founder member of Reed Rage Bassoon Quartet.

Rosie teaches the bassoon and piano privately and at St Mary’s College in Crosby, Liverpool. She also runs the annual BIG Double Reed Day, a day of workshops, recitals, masterclasses and ensemble playing for oboists and bassoonists aged 7-97, which attracts about 150 participants each year. Rosie lives in Wallasey on the Wirral with her husband and two cats, Jeoffry and Suzie. In her spare time, she enjoys dressmaking, arranging silly tunes for bassoon quartet or massed double reed ensemble, exploring heritage railways and learning British Sign Language.