Joanna Bassett’s service to the NFA, including time spent as its President, Vice President, and Program Chair, along with many years spent as a committee chair and committee member, serves as the underpinning for her well-deserved accolade as this year’s Distinguished Service Award (DSA) winner. Joanna is also the NFA’s only president to find themselves thrust into the role of an interim Executive Director during a time of deep transition and change for the NFA. 

Her commitment to the NFA reflects the heart and will of an individual whose spirit of giving was years in the making, tracking all the way back to when she spent her free time volunteering, as a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). 

After graduating from Northwestern, where she studied with Walfrid Kujala, Bassett pursued her master’s at the Eastman School of Music with Bonita Boyd and Leone Buyse. She began her performance career as a member of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra from 1982 to 1984, returning to the US to begin work on her master’s degree, and joined the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra that same year. She was Second Flute and Piccolo with the RPO until 2018—a long and illustrious orchestral career. She has also performed with the Canandaigua Lake Music Festival, Skaneateles Festival, Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, Chamber Music Rochester, the First Muse series at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, and Cordancia Chamber Orchestra. 

She was a founding member and former president of the Rochester Flute Association (RFA). Also an educator, she is currently associate dean for western New York’s well- established community music school, The Hochstein School, where she has served in several administrative roles since 2007. At Hochstein, she combines her desire to help others find their passion in the arts with serving the school’s mission of an arts education that is accessible to all. 

Of her activities within the NFA, Bassett says, “It’s the chance to work with like-minded people to create something for everyone to enjoy. In volunteering for the NFA, I learned so much about how to work together, how to set the future organization up for success (by shadowing other volunteers and creating good succession planning), and how to try something because others believe in you. So many times over the years, I have felt the reciprocal support of people I have met through the NFA.” 

Read the Flutist Quarterly tribute at flutistquarterly.org/joanna-bassett/ (link opens in new window; log-in required)