Bruce Hammel
Associate professor
Music theory and bassoon
Phone: (804) 828-4018
E-mail: bhammel@vcu.edu
Office: James W. Black Music Center, Room 3006
Bruce Hammel is an associate professor of music at VCU Music, where he serves as artist and teaches in the music theory program. His special interest in developing Web-based instructional materials has resulted in the creation of many new online resources for his music theory and bassoon students. He is also founder and president of SightReadThis.com, a Web site devoted to improving music students’ sightreading skills. Hammel received his Doctor of Music in bassoon performance at Florida State University where he studied with William Winstead. His other degrees were earned at the University of Michigan (Master of Music in wind instruments), the Crane School of Music, State University of New York at Potsdam (Bachelor of Music Education) and Hamilton College (Bachelor of Arts in biology).
Hammel’s performance experience is extensive. He has served as principal bassoonist with the Amarillo, Tallahassee and Charlottesville symphonies, and frequently performs with the Richmond Symphony on bassoon and contra-bassoon. Hammel has been an active performer of chamber music, as well, and has performed as a member of the Atlantic Winds (VCU), Currents (University of Richmond) and the Albemarle Ensemble (University of Virginia). He can be heard on numerous recordings of chamber music with the National Wind Players, a recording ensemble for Klavier records, and with Currents. As a soloist, Hammel has performed regularly in recitals at the state, national and international levels. In 1992, he performed as a guest artist at the Shanghai Conservatory in China. For his solo recording of the bassoon music of Allan Blank, which includes the “Concertino for Bassoon and String Orchestra” recorded with the Polish National Radio Symphony, reviewers praised Hammel for his “superior playing” and for delivering the works with “fluidity and exceptional ease.”
A member of the Virginia Music Educators Association, the Music Teachers National Association and the International Double Reed Society, Hammel teaches students of all levels. He frequently has students performing in the All-Virginia Band and Orchestra, Virginia Band and Orchestra Director’s District I and III bands, the Richmond Youth Symphony and the Greater Richmond Youth Wind Ensemble.
Hammel is married to Alice Hammel, and has two children, Hanna and Hollie.
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