
Last week, we were lucky enough to have a guest bassoonist on campus — Paul Hanson. Paul is one of just a few real jazz bassoonists out there. That is to say, he’s not a bassoonist who dabbles in jazz or a sax player who dabbles in bassoon (although he does play a lot of sax, too), he’s truly a jazz bassoonist. The list of people with whom he’s played and/or recorded is quite impressive; check out his bio at jazzbassoon.com for the full list. He’s probably best known to general audiences for his work with Béla Fleck & the Flecktones, appearing on Outbound and the CD/DVD Live at the Quick. I’d been looking forward to his visit for quite awhile. I’d heard Paul at the 2005 IDRS conference in Austin, as well as on the Flecktones albums. Also, I’ve been taking some improvisation classes (apparently the first bassoonist at UW ever to do so), and was eager to get the chance to work with him.
Paul arrived Monday, and was scheduled to play a concert that night. Marc invited me to come sit in on his rehearsal that afternoon. The combo consisted of local pianist/composer Paul Hastil, Director of the UW School of Music John Schaffer on bass, and grad student Tom Ross on drums. It was quite interesting for me to see how the four of them — who’d never played together as a group — put together a performance in a single short rehearsal.
The concert that night was great. There were a few hiccups (for instance, it was about 85 degrees in the hall), but it was very impressive and enjoyable, nonetheless. I’d advertised the concert in my Music 101 discussion sections, and quite a few of my students showed up. The band played a variety of tunes by Wayne Shorter, Kenny Barron, Kenny Garrett, Paul Hanson, and others. The highlights (in my opinion) were a tune by Jacob Do Bandolim called “Flight of the Fly” which involved a perpetually-moving circularly-breathed bassoon line, a solo improvisation in which Paul explored effects and playing against loops of himself, and a Kenny Barron tune called “Voyage” which really grooved.
After the concert, Paul came up to me and asked if I was the guy he’d heard hitting high Gs in the practice rooms earlier. I admitted that I was (finally, my penchant for playing ridiculously high pays off!), and he asked if I’d show him how I did it the next day. I happily agreed, of course. I was planning to spend the rest of the evening practicing. But, I ran into Marc, who invited me out for a beer. So, I went out to the Greenbush Bar with him, Paul, and John and Sarah Schaffer — pretty cool.

The next day, we had an improv class during our normal studio time. Paul talked a bit about how he came to be a jazz bassoonist and some approaches to starting to improvise. Then, the whole bassoon studio went on stage to try our hands at improvising. For quite a few people, this was their first experience with improv, but everyone did quite well. We did some call-and-response exercises as well as trading fours around the circle.
Later that afternoon, we had a chance to have lessons with Paul. It was was actually more of a masterclass-type setup, with a few observers. I went first, and started out with doing some basic modal improvisation with Paul playing chords on the piano. He gradually made his progressions more complex, challenging me to hear the changes and add altered tones to my playing. It was tough — I’m used to playing over set chord progressions, and it took a lot more brain power to try to react to what he was doing. Then, he wrote some patterns and phrases on the chalkboard to demonstrate how to think horizontally and construct an interesting figure over a progression. It was a lot of fun as well as being kind of hard work. He gave me quite a few things to work on.
We thought Paul was just going to be here for two days, but it turned out that he was sticking around on Wednesday, as well. Unfortunately, I was very busy that day — my 101ers had an exam the next day, and I’d scheduled meetings with them for much of the afternoon. But, I managed to free up 45 minutes or so. I was hoping to get another lesson, but Marc was using his studio at the time, and there wasn’t really any other place to go. So, we just hung out in the lounge, and I picked his brain for awhile. I asked him about how much bassoon playing he ends up doing compared to sax playing, what sort of electronics he uses (and what a basic set of bassoon amplification gear would be), the integration of improvisation into a traditional classical bassoon education, and some other things. If I’d known I would get the chance to just sit down and talk to him like that, I’d have done more question preparation and maybe conducted a real interview. I still got a lot out of our chat, though.
It was very educational week for me, and it was a real pleasure to get so much time to work with Paul. He’s an amazing player, an enthusiastic musician, and a really nice guy. Sadly, I only managed to get a few kind of crappy pics (using my point-and-shoot digital in low light with no flash).