Jesse Read has served as Principal Bassoon of the Pacific Baroque and Carmel Bach Festival Orchestras, Metropolitan Opera National Company, San Francisco Opera, Spring Opera, and North Hollands Symphony Orchestra, as well as the CBC Curio Ensemble and Vancouver Chamber Winds. A specialist in 18th-century music, he has performed and recorded with the Philharmonia Baroque, Tafelmusik, Capella Cologne , the Netherlands, St. Petersburg and Basel Chamber Orchestras, as well as the baroque orchestras of Boston, Los Angeles and Portland.

Former Principal Bassoon of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and active soloist. He currently has eight solo recordings and his most recent CD Stroll in the Cool on the Skylark label was nominated as the “Best Classical Recording” in the 2008 West Coast Music Awards. Professor Read conducts and gives master-classes at the European Mozart Academy (in Prague, Krakow and Budapest), and conservatories in Lisbon, Montpellier, Taipei, Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague. He was formerly a faculty member at the University of Victoria, University of Delaware and Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. He joined the UBC faculty in 1990 and served as Director of the School of Music from 1996-2007. Professor Read was the Music Director of the the UBC Symphony Orchestra (1990-2008), and was also the Head of the Wind and Brass Division at the School of Music.