Whitney Crockett joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Principal Bassoon as one of Gustavo Dudamel’s first appointments. He came to Los Angeles after 12 years as Principal Bassoon of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine. Prior to his work in New York, Crockett held the same position with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Earlier in his career, he held Principal Bassoon positions with the Florida Orchestra, the South Florida Symphony, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacionál of the Dominican Republic. 

As a soloist, Crockett has appeared with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Orchestra, the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra, the Bellingham Festival Orchestra, and Les Violons du Roy. He has performed regularly on the Met Chamber Players series at Carnegie Hall, and he has recorded, performed, and toured extensively with the New York Kammermusiker double reed ensemble. 

A respected pedagogue, Crockett has served on the faculties of the Juilliard and Manhattan schools of music, as well as McGill University in Montreal and the Académie de Verbier in Switzerland. He has given master classes at numerous institutions, including the Domaine Forget in Québec, the Curtis Institute, the Puerto Rico Conservatory, and many universities across the United States. 

A native of Miami, Whitney Crockett began his bassoon studies with Michael Finn and Luciano Magnanini. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he studied with Stephen Maxym.

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The Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191/186e, is a bassoon concerto written in 1774 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is the most often performed and studied piece in the entire bassoon repertory. Nearly all professional bassoonists will perform the piece at some stage in their career, and it is probably the most commonly requested piece in orchestral auditions – it is usually requested that the player perform excerpts from the concerto's first two movements in every audition.

Although the autograph score is lost, the exact date of its completion is known: 4 June 1774.

Mozart wrote the bassoon concerto when he was 18 years old, and it was his first concerto for a wind instrument. Although it is believed that it was commissioned by an aristocratic amateur bassoon player Thaddäus Freiherr von Dürnitz, who owned seventy-four works by Mozart, this is a claim that is supported by little evidence. Scholars believe that Mozart may have written five bassoon concertos, but that only the first has survived.

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