Reed Cases

December 17, 2009 2 comments

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.

Double Reed Day

January 26, 2009 Reply

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.

Community Chest

December 1, 2008 4 comments

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.

No, we’ll call you…

November 25, 2008 Reply

I now present a com­pan­ion piece to the fab­u­lous record­ing of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s Bas­soon Con­certo in B-flat Major, K. 191 that I posted here a cou­ple of years ago. This, rather than pre­sent­ing a dar­ing per­for­mance, give s a behind-the-scenes look at the clas­si­cal world: it presents a dar­ing audi­tion. This con­tra­bas­soon­ist has some very… shall we say ‘inter­est­ing’ inter­pre­ta­tions of the var­i­ous orches­tral excerpts he has been asked to prepare.

Enjoy: Con­tra­bas­soon Audi­tion (wma)

Two Contras

February 19, 2007 Reply
Thirty-two feet of fun

Yes­ter­day was our ridicu­lous con­tra­bas­soon duo recital. It was a lot of fun, and I’m pretty pleased with how it went. Garry was nice enough to haul in his whole record­ing rig and record the recital, so I should even­tu­ally (pend­ing his free time and mine) have a good record­ing to post here. We actu­ally had a pretty good turnout — I guess hav­ing a gim­mick helps with that. In any case, I’m no longer in hard­core recital prep mode, so I should finally be able to sort through my Brazil pic­tures and post them some­time this week.

Two Contras Poster

February 7, 2007 1 comment

Here’s the poster I cre­ated for my upcom­ing con­tra­bas­soon duo recital. It’s going to be com­pletely ridicu­lous. We’re play­ing a num­ber of things that were arranged for bas­soon duos or trios: some arias from The Bar­ber of Seville and some excerpts from Der Freis­chütz (with the help of our friend Katie Koralesky on dou­ble bass). We’re also play­ing a piece by Daniel Dorff called Sonata D’Amore, which was actu­ally writ­ten for two con­tra­bas­soons. Each of us will play a solo piece with piano, as well. I’ll post record­ings after the recital, for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure (assum­ing you have a good sub­woofer). Click the image for a larger ver­sion of the poster.

Dubuque

November 11, 2006 1 comment
The Mighty Mississippi

This week­end, I’m play­ing with the Dubuque Sym­phony, just across the Mis­sis­sippi River from the Wisconsin/Illinois bor­der. I’m play­ing con­tra­bas­soon (and a lit­tle bit of Bas­soon III) on an all-Shostakovich con­cert — Fes­tive Over­ture, Suite from The Gad­fly, and Sym­phony No. 10. I drove over and back for rehearsals on Tues­day and Thurs­day, then came back Fri­day after­noon for the week­end. We have one con­cert tonight and another tomor­row afternoon.

My Room at Shalom

The sym­phony is putting me up for the week­end, in a place called the Shalom Retreat Cen­ter. It’s an inter­est­ing place. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but from what I can tell, it’s a Chris­t­ian non-denominational meeting/spritual healing/retreat space. None of the inte­rior doors lock. When I arrived last night after rehearsal, I punched in the code for the com­bi­na­tion lock on the outer door, found a card with my room assign­ment on the front desk, and ven­tured out to find my room. I didn’t see a sin­gle per­son, even when I ven­tured out later to find an alarm clock that had been going off for quite awhile. I found the clock in the cafe­te­ria in the base­ment of the build­ing, turned off the alarm, and went explor­ing. There must have been peo­ple there some­where — the park­ing lot was full. But, I saw no sign of any of them. Bizarre. Stand­ing in my room, it was so quiet (after I found and silenced the alarm clock) that the sound of blood flow­ing through my ears seemed incred­i­bly loud.

Star Brew­ing Company

Today after our morn­ing rehearsal, I ven­tured out to explore the town a lit­tle bit. I bought a cou­ple of clas­si­cal records from a lit­tle thrift shop, then ven­tured down to the Mis­sis­sippi. I passed the National Mis­sis­sippi River Museum & Aquar­ium. I didn’t go in, but I walked around out­side to look at some of the river­boats they have on dis­play. I walked along the river for awhile, then ran into a cel­list from the sym­phony who also hap­pens to live a cou­ple of blocks away from me in Madi­son. We con­tin­ued up the river, and checked out a cou­ple of his­tor­i­cal build­ings — the Star Brew­ing Com­pany, and a Civil War-era shot tower. Shot tow­ers were used to pro­duce lead shot with the aid of grav­ity and sur­face tension.

After walk­ing along the river, we parted ways and I then walked back up to the down­town area. I’ve been parked in the Mis­sis­sippi Mug cof­fee shop for a cou­ple of hours now, drink­ing tea, lis­ten­ing to live jazz, work­ing on a travel grant pro­posal, and surf­ing the web. But, the shop closes soon, and I should get back to Shalom to don my tux, any­way. I didn’t bring my real cam­era, but I shot a few dig­i­tal pics. Click the thumb­nails above, or check out the rest of the gallery here.

Contra-ct

January 7, 2005 1 comment

So, I’m down in Fort Myers play­ing with the South­west Florida Sym­phony again. They called me up Mon­day night to ask if I could come down and play con­tra­bas­soon on Mahler 5. I agreed imme­di­ately, not fully con­sid­er­ing the fact that I’d have to leave the same day classes start. I man­aged to work all that out though, and against all odds arrived in time for the first rehearsal Wednes­day night. Any­way, the con­tra­bas­soon I’m using is on loan from the Venice Sym­phony (Florida, not Italy). This is the last line of their rental/loan contract:

One won­ders what hap­pened that made this a nec­es­sary clause…