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     I was sent a video of an awesome performance by Peter Verhoyen, Tobias Knobloch, and Stefan De Scheppe performing Was mit den Tränen geschieht by Stephen Hough. This piece is a great example of the blend possible by the two woodwinds voiced in extreme registers. This video is from Peter Verhoyen’s piccolo chamber recital.

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Contrabassoon Reed Case

A few years ago I made my first Contraforte reed case out of tupperware, that case is a little beat up now so I made a new one. This is made from an acrylic box from The Container Store, some thick foam and duco cement. I drilled holes on both sides for air circulation, but I mostly keep my reed cases open when at home.

This case is for Contraforte reeds, but now I’m thinking about making a bassoon reed case. All together this was almost $15 which is still cheaper than the commercially available options.

Bassoon Reed Case

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Stroboconn

     The newest addition to the reed desk is a Stroboconn Tuner. Stephen Paulson has one of these in his bassoon studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. It was always so fun to use his so I started hunting to find one of my own. I ended up finding it on eBay and they continue to pop up from time to time. The tuner is two separate units and they are both quite heavy so shipping was complicated.

Stroboconn

     The display is on the top unit, it’s arranged like a keyboard and incased behind glass. There is an interesting feature between the “white keys” and “black keys” There is a plaque on the left side of the display which reads: “Instrument in key of” and an adjustable sliding mechanism. The key options are C, Eb, Dd, Bb and F; this is for people playing transposing instruments so they don’t have to do transposing math while they are playing into it.

Stroboconn

 The bottom unit is for calibration which allows for adjustment in cents. For example some orchestras tune to A=442 which would be the change from 0 (A=440) to 7 on the tuner. This tuner works on tube technology and its my understanding that most of the tuning is done in the lower unit and the top is just the display.

Stroboconn

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     I moved down to Silicon Valley about a year and changed my reed setup. I never ended up finishing my series about what was on the reed desk, and now there have been many new additions. So I’m going to revive this series. 
Reed Desk

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St. Louis Symphony is auditioning Contrabassoonists. The audition is on May 1 and the position starts August 2016. The symphony recently posted the repertoire list, but not yet the sheet music. I’m posting it here because I think it’s useful for people who aren’t taking the audition to see what is on the list. As a student I used to prepare audition lists as if I was going to attend.

The exposition of the second movement of the Mozart Concerto is asked which isn’t typical. Also multiple Shostakovich excerpts are on the list which can be hard to get a hold of.

St Louis Symphony

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I finally got to perform the Franck Sonata, which I had just been practicing for fun. This was originally a violin sonata and was such a great piece that cellists began to play it as well. I am playing off of the Jules Desart edition of the Cello Sonata which works on the Contraforte just fine. The Pianist is Britton Day (who is amazing!)