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Fraser Jackson has had a long career as a bassoonist and contrabassoonist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Along the way, he has been lucky enough to play as a guest with such groups as the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), the National Symphony (Washington, DC) and the New York Philharmonic. His love of chamber music and his curiosity about all kinds of music led to him founding a hotshot bassoon quartet called The Caliban Quartet, as well as Musica Franca which might still be the only baroque group to use the contrabassoon as a continuo instrument. As a duo with his wife Monique de Margerie, he has performed throughout Canada and in such exotic locales as Cambodia and Indiana; he and Monique appear each summer at the Cammac Music Festival in Quebec and the Interprovincial Music Camp in Ontario. Fraser is a prolific arranger and has over 80 pieces in his portfolio, some of which are published commercially and some of which have been recorded by complete strangers. One of his favourites was a reduction of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, performed by Monique and nine players from the TSO in February, 2017. He performs on a bassoon made of Ontario maple by Benson Bell, and a contrabassoon made by Heckel in 1958.
