Adjunct Lecturer of Music
Bassoon
Phone: 903.566.7450
Email: jamesmorris@uttyler.edu
Building: FAC
Department: School of Performing Arts
Additional Department: Music
Ryan Morris
Biography
Ryan Morris believes in a holistic approach to bassoon performance and pedagogy that
prepares students to be flexible and versatile as they pursue professional opportunities.
He
currently performs and teaches around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and owns his
own reed
making business, Ryan’s Reed Box, which allows him to make reeds for both student
and
professional musicians across the United States.
As a passionate advocate for the performance and elevation of newly created wind chamber
music, Ryan has commissioned and premiered more than 20 works over the past decade,
including a featured performance of two new electroacoustic works for bassoon duo
at the
2021 Conference of the International Double Reed Society. He can be heard on Illuminations,
the self-released debut album of Filamental Trio, featuring new works for clarinet,
bassoon, and
piano by composers Forrest Pierce, Kim Rivera, Brad Baumgardner, Andrew Cole, Lee
Hartman,
and Samuel Parrilla. His ensemble Fenglírë Reed Trio was a finalist for The American
Prize 2020
Professional Chamber Music division.
Ryan’s career as a performer has taken him from New York City to the Dallas-Fort Worth
Metroplex and numerous places in between. He spent two summers as a quintet/sextet
fellow
at the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, where he performed and premiered works
with
Imani Winds and the Force Five wind quintet of the Band of the Air Force Reserve.
He has also
performed with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Philharmonia
of
Greater Kansas City, and with the national tours of Lindsey Sterling, Celtic Thunder,
and
Evanescence.
In the ten years that Ryan spent teaching in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, he maintained
a studio
of 50 bassoon students, who were consistently praised for their technique and musicianship
&
received superior ratings in both regional solo contests and all-state level band
competition. In
addition to developing a unique curriculum that included aural skills, reed-making,
and
contrabassoon, Ryan hosted and self-funded a Dallas Double Reed Day for 45 students
in the
area.
Ryan received his DMA in Bassoon Performance at the University of Kansas, where he
was the
Graduate Teaching Assistant for Dr. Eric Stomberg and the instructor of record for
courses in
bassoon reed-making and music education methods. He earned his MM from the University
of
Missouri - Kansas City and his BM from Texas State University. Influential teachers
include Dr.
Eric Stomberg, Marita Abner, Renee Dee, Daris Hale, Scott Phillips, and Carole Lyons