Giant Dou­ble Reed Ensem­ble, Viewed From the Con­tra­bas­soon Chair

This past Sat­ur­day was UW-Madison’s annual Dou­ble Reed Day. We had two guest artists: Carol Cope Lowe (bas­soon) and Anna Hen­drick­son (oboe), who in addi­tion to cur­rently teach­ing at SUNY-Potsdam are both UW-Madison alum­nae. Most mem­bers of the UW dou­ble reed stu­dios were there, and we had another 25 or so mid­dle school, high, school, and com­mu­nity play­ers as well. I arrived a lit­tle early so I could play some of the bas­soons and bocals that Mid­west Musi­cal Imports had sent along. One instru­ment they sent was the twin of my Püch­ner 5000C. I was happy to find that it was both my favorite instru­ment out of the bunch, and roughly equiv­a­lent to my own. Also, its price tag was sub­stan­tially higher than what I paid two years ago — woohoo!

The day offi­cially started with a con­cert — all we UW stu­dents played an ensem­ble piece, then each pro­fes­sor (the two vis­i­tors, plus our own Marc Val­lon and Marc Fink) per­formed a solo work. Fol­low­ing the con­cert, we split off into oboe and bas­soon mas­ter­classes. We all came back together for a big dou­ble reed ensem­ble (pic­tured above) to play Marc Vallon’s arrange­ments of “The Wash­ing­ton Post,” Hun­gar­ian Dance No. 5, and “Sabre Dance,” as well as the first move­ment of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fire­works.