This past weekend was the annual Double Reed Day at UW-Madison. DRD involves two concerts, masterclasses, and a huge double reed ensemble. Our guests this year were Nancy Ambrose King (professor of oboe at the University of Michigan) and Alain de Gourdon (the head of Lorée). As usual, the whole event was a lot of fun.
We grad bassoonists were asked to assemble a quartet to play on the evening concert. As it turned out, only 3 of us (out of 5) were going to be around the week before DRD, so we asked our prof., Marc Vallon, to join us. For the occasion, Brian and I spent a few afternoons creating a bassoon quartet arrangement of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Our performance was very well received, and a number of audience members approached us later to say, “that should be on YouTube!” We liked that idea, and so here it is:
Recently I’ve been making more reeds than usual, largely because I’m trying to figure out how to make reeds for three 19th-century bassoons that I’m learning to play for an upcoming lecture recital. I quickly became tired of storing active reeds on a drying rack, and decided that I needed an additional reed case. At about the same time, I realized that although I’ve played contrabassoon for about ten years, I’ve never actually owned a proper contra reed case. I’ve kept my two oldest reeds (bought my freshman year of college, and still working reasonably well) in an old pen case, and the four reeds I’ve made myself (at least one of which is still a blank) have lived in an Altoids tin.
In my search for reed cases from various double reed suppliers, I came across the web site of Roger Garrett, who is professor of both clarinet and instrumental conducting at Illinois Wesleyan University. On the side, Garrett is a skilled woodwright. He makes reed cases, batons, baton cases, pens, and a variety of other items. On his site, he provides a wealth of information about his reed cases — standard sizes and configurations, examples of bespoke cases he’s made, and photos of cases in a variety of common and exotic woods.
I corresponded with Garrett a bit before placing an order, asking about the prices of different woods and the possibilities of modifying his standard bassoon reed case design. His basic case has a foam strip that holds six bassoon reeds, but I have a similarly sized case that holds nine. I ended up having him send along one of his oboe reed strips, which with a little modification allowed me to fit eight bassoon reeds instead of six. He happened to have a curly maple contrabassoon case and a quilted maple bassoon case ready to go, so I bought them:
Bassoon and Contrabassoon Reed Cases
The Cases Opened
The prices were very reasonable (the same or less than I would’ve paid for less interesting cases from a double reed supplier), and as you can see, the cases are gorgeous. Someday when I’m rich and famous, I’ll order some African blackwood or cocobolo cases with a matching fountain pen.
The UW Little Big Band had its fall concert a few weeks ago, and I’ve just gotten around to posting the recording. This semester, our instrumentation was trombone, cello, bassoon, guitar, piano, bass, and drums. We’re a little bass-instrument-heavy, but I think our arrangements neatly dealt with that fact. One big change this time around is that Pat (the cellist) and I played amplified, in order to achieve a better balance within the ‘horn’ section. It worked well in concert, but the balance is sometimes off in the recording. See the program and hear the tunes here.
