It’s so amazing that we live in the age of youtube and world wide web! We are able to hear what different players sound like all over the world, the differing styles and tones of certain players. Contrabassoon is especially interesting because I don’t think that contrabassoon tone is uniform throughout most cities! Thanks to players uploading footage and interviews we are able to hear from a wind section that we wouldn’t normally have access to. These are a few clips featuring players around the world.
I have just started working with a new batch of cane and it is very high quality. This is cane that was cut 2 years ago and is on the harder side. It seems more middle of the road and has been great with the Fox 2 shape for bassoon and Reiger K1 on contrabassoon. If you are interested in some reeds head over to King Bassoon Reeds or email me if you are interested in cane.
The Southeast Symphony (including me!) is putting on a production of Soldier’s Tale by Stravinsky. I invite anyone and everyone to come out and see it, this Thursday at 8pm. The address is on the above postcard, and you can purchase tickets beforehand at ticketpeak.com
Soldier’s Tale is a piece for Chamber orchestra, actors, and dancers. The story is based on the Russian folk tale “The Runaway Soldier” which is about a soldier’s encounter with the Devil. The work heavily features the violin which is a large part of the story.
Our performance was video recorded and is now up on youtube!
The usable range of the Contraforte is from A0-C5. This is an improvement on the contrabassoon range by a few steps. Although I know some very talented contra players that can play almost as high as any contraforte. Im mostly posting this so that composers are able to hear the timbre change of the different registers.
The Contraforte does not have a dependable high D but it is possible. Here I play the opening bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, at actually pitch. I used an extremely thick reed with a lot of resistance.
There are 2 Buffet Contrabassoons for sale on Musical Chairs. These are contras built with the french fingering system and a different bore than a Heckel system contra. They appear to be in great condition and I’m sure will sell quickly. This is the instrument intended for in the works of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Ravel.
Les Siècles performed Rite of Spring using period instruments at the BBC Proms. The bassoon section uses old french bassoons and tall construction french contras.
This weekend (March 5,6,7) Thomas Adès with be conducting his own composition with the San Francisco Symphony. His piece “In Seven Days” is based on the seven days of creation outlined in the book of Genesis. It is a multimedia piece including video projection and he scored it using a contraforte!
Bay area people should all go and hear some contraforte in Davies hall!
Hindemith wrote such a wealth of music for solo instruments that almost every player in the orchestra has a piece. Hindemith wrote Sonatas for flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, violin, viola, cello, bass, harp and even wrote for rare instruments like heckelphone. Double reed players particularly like Hindemith because so few works for solo were written for us during the early 20th century, and his are so idiomatic.
Hindemith Playing Bassoon, 1940
The Hindemith Bassoon Sonata is a college bassoon recital ringer. It is harmonically interesting without being too taxing (for the bassoon player)
Hindemith’s music was banned from performance in Germany in 1936 and so he relocated to Switzerland. And in 1938 he wrote the oboe sonata and bassoon sonata.
The following year, still in Switzerland, he composed the clarinet sonata, trumpet sonata, harp sonata, french horn sonata, a viola sonata and a violin sonata.
Paul Hindemith died in 1963; in the last decade of his life he completed the tuba sonata, string bass sonata, organ concerto and sonata for four horns
There is a new wave of music products that is aimed, not to be the very best, but to be accessible and affordable. There have been plastic woodwind instruments for many decades, and they are a more cost effective and durable choice for young players.
Now there is a new wave of plastic instruments that are lower quality and don’t try to compete with the real wooden instruments. These instruments are mostly made in Asia, and are mostly made from injection mold plastic.
Contrabass versions exist for almost every instrument now. Most of the newer instruments are scarcely written for and are mainly used in new music. There are a few newer companies making wind instruments that can go lower and lower. Eppelsheim makes my contraforte, as well as a very well received contrabass clarinet, tubax, and contrabass sax. Hogenhuis is popular making contrabass flutes.
I tried an experiment last week involving a Green Reed for Contraforte. I just harvested some cane in early January and decided to try to immediately make a reed out of it instead of letting it dry. And this is what turned out! I regular reed that sounded and acted like any other reed but it was fresh green cane and didnt need to be soaked in water before I played on it. The texture was similar to a very hard piece of cane so I had to make this thinner than I would normally. After a few days it started to dry out and warp and is now is playing very sharp. Next I’m going to try this on regular bassoon.
I would suggest trying it to all of the cane harvesters out there!
Kristopher King 