Gaelen McCormick’s career started on stage with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. After 23 years, she “retired” due to deafness and now is making a new path in the arts in healthcare field, leading the Eastman Performing Arts Medicine Center at the University of Rochester. Her twin passions for music and healthcare are mirrored in her nonprofit board service: she is the immediate past-president of the International Society of Bassists and President of the National Organization for Arts in Health.
Pedagogy is an integral part of her career, whether helping new bass players to find their voice and learn to play without injury, or helping teachers create bass studios and school programs that are sustainable. Gaelen recently celebrated 25 years on the faculty of the Eastman Community Music School. She is the author of three pedagogy books for developing bow technique, Mastering the Bow vol 1-3, and a book of duets for developing bassists, Double Trouble, all published by Carl Fischer. She recently completed a three-year-long project to review and compile the history of pedagogy of the double bass, co-authored with violinist Dijana Ihas and cellist Miranda Wilson, which was published in late 2023 by Routledge, Teaching Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass: Historical and Modern Pedagogical Practices. Her most recent contribution to the literature is an annotated edition of the well-known 30 Etudes of Franz Simandl, published by Carl Fischer in late 2025.
Her teaching has been recognized by the Monroe Country Music Association’s Richard Snook Memorial Award in 2019; the Eastman Community Music School’s Jack L Frank Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021; the International Society of Bassists Young Bassist Ambassador award in 2021.
She has been a masterclass artist or presenter at the Pittsburgh Double Bass Symposium (2024), the Penn State Bass Day (2025), the Women’s Double Bass Symposium at the Curtis Institute (2024), the Louisiana State University Bass Festival (2025), the Kansas City Bass Workshop (2024), the Twin Cities Bass Workshop (2015), Bass Works (2022, 2026) as well as many International Society of Bassists conventions.
Gaelen holds performance degrees from Carnegie Mellon University where she studied with Jeffrey Turner, then-principal bass of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman School where she studied with James VanDemark. She is an alumna of the League of American Orchestra’s Essentials of Orchestra Management. And because learning never stops, she recently attained her Level One certification in Paul Rolland String Pedagogy.