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:

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.

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Bonus points if you can find the second thing wrong with the picture. Westminster Gold strikes again…

The photo was even taken during one of my solos! There wasn’t a story attached, and the pic doesn’t seem to be online anywhere. But, The Cardinal publishes a PDF version of their paper. I grabbed today’s copy (since there doesn’t seem to be an archive) — you can find it here.

P.S. — I hope to have audio from this concert as well as our last one posted soon.

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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.

I only managed to take a few pictures, as I was busy playing contrabassoon much of the time. I’ve posted them here.

I created this faux Monopoly card sometime while I was at FSU, printed a few of them, and handed them to friends who got stuck with contrabassoon duty in orchestra. Sometime last school year I showed one to my friend Brian, and he asked if I could make a few more for him to send to friends. I finally got around to printing up a new batch a week or so ago, and thought I’d post the image here as well.

Enjoy: Contrabassoon Audition (wma)

Then tonight, I happened across this:

Someone (I don’t know who) has had the same idea, and done a very good job realizing it. The artist neatly sidestepped one photoshopping issue that kept me from working on the idea: by placing music stands in front of the players, s/he eliminated the need to erase the bodies of the guitars, which are much wider than a bassoon. The necks of the guitars don’t pose the same problem, as the bassoons’ bells easily cover them. The image is very well done all around; I especially like the Wii-style bassoon controller.

[via Dead Robot]

I don’t even know how to respond to this.

[via Wired]

This year, I’ve been playing the UW Little Big Band. The smaller of the school’s two jazz ensembles, it’s really more of a combo than any sort of big band. We had our first concert of the semester last week, and I’m marking the occasion by finally getting around to posting the recordings from last semester’s concert. Last semester, our group consisted of me on bassoon, Mike Bailly on vibraphone, Kyle Strohmaier on piano, Ben Willis on bass, and Alison Jeske on drums, with our coach Les Thimmig on flute. Vocalist Mandy Compton joined us for a couple of tunes, and Mike Mixtacki and Ian Disjardin provided some Brazilian percussion for Serenata. Our instrumentation is slightly different this semester, but I’ll get to that when I post our latest concert.

Anyway, the way the group is set up, we play a whole bunch of tunes in our rehearsals, then vote on actual concert repertoire a few weeks before a concert. Once the program is set, each member of the group is responsible for arranging one tune. We do a bit of workshopping of the arrangements during rehearsals, and arrive at the concert with more or less finished products. A couple of rehearsals before the concert, we also pick who will take solos on which tunes.

One thing we haven’t decided on by concert time is the nature of the blues we’re going to play. Les, our coach, simply announces that we’re going to play the blues, gives us a key and a tempo, and we’re off. Unfortunately, the recording cut off his patter (not to mention our pensive looks as we silently pray that he won’t call out an awkward key).

You can find the concert at davewells.us/littlebigband.html. Enjoy — after all, it’s not every day that you hear a bassoon playing jazz.