Klaus Thunemann's Foray into Jazz

The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who have record­ed bas­soon in jazz con­texts have been dou­blers who pri­mar­i­ly play sax­o­phone, such as Illinois Jacquet, Frankie Trumbauer, and Ben Wendel. A very small num­ber of play­ers (Paul Hanson and Michael Rabinowitz are the best known) tru­ly spe­cial­ize in play­ing jazz on the bas­soon. But there is a third cat­e­go­ry as well: orches­tral bas­soon­ists who have occa­sion­al­ly ven­tured into jazz contexts.

In 1935, Sol Schoenbach record­ed four tunes by British jazz pianist Reginald Foresythe in a small group that also includ­ed Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. Kenneth Pasmanick, long­time prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of the National Symphony Orchestra, played on two albums by gui­tarist Charlie Byrd. And Manuel Ziegler, prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of the New York Philharmonic from 1957 to 1981, record­ed a num­ber of albums in the late 1950s with Gunther Schuller, the Modern Jazz Society, and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

But one of the most sur­pris­ing (to me, at least) and impres­sive jazz out­ings by an orches­tral bas­soon­ist is Klaus Thunemann’s appear­ance on German pianist Michael Naura’s 1975 album Vanessa (ECM 1053). Naura and Thunemann are joined by Wolfgang Schlüter on marim­ba, Eberhard Weber on bass, and Joe Nay on drums. Schlüter and Naura worked togeth­er exten­sive­ly, and Weber and Nay col­lab­o­rat­ed with them on a num­ber of albums. But this is Thunemann’s only record­ing with the group, and as far as I can tell, his only jazz record­ing peri­od. On the back cov­er of the album, Naura writes:

…we team up with Klaus Thunemann, who is solo bas­soon­ist in the ‘Northern German Radio Symphony Orchestra’ (NDR), pro­fes­sor at the Hannover College of Music, and who plays Schönberg under Pierre Boulez equal­ly as com­pelling­ly as he does Vivaldi with the ‘I Musici di Roma.’ I believe it was pre­cise­ly this dis­tance from which Thunemann has for many years and with inter­est viewed jazz, that pro­vid­ed the stim­u­lus which inspired us when we made this recording.

Thunemann fig­ures promi­nent­ly in three of the album’s six tracks. “Salvatore” opens the album, and at 11:38, is by far the longest tune on the record. It fea­tures a soar­ing, lyri­cal bas­soon melody fol­lowed by two and a half min­utes of impro­vi­sa­tion by Thunemann. Schlüter takes his turn, then the whole group engages in some very open-end­ed impro­vi­sa­tion, includ­ing some bas­soon mul­ti­phon­ics. The bas­soon melody returns at the end. “Baboon” begins and ends as a dirty, funky tune in which Thunemann explores a rough and even some­times growl­ing tone. The mid­dle is a blaz­ing­ly fast group impro­vi­sa­tion that does not include bas­soon. Thunemann gets a co-writ­ing cred­it on the album’s last tune, “Black Pigeon”. It opens with almost two min­utes of bas­soon impro­vi­sa­tion — much of it com­plete­ly solo. About two min­utes in, it launch­es into a mid-tem­po groove, with bas­soon melody and a long marim­ba solo from Schlüter. Thunemann takes anoth­er solo turn before return­ing to the melody at the end.

All in all, this album con­tains the most exten­sive and impres­sive impro­vi­sa­tion I’ve heard from some­one we think of as a one of the giants of the “legit” bas­soon world. Thunemann sounds at ease in the ensem­ble, and uses his con­sid­er­able tech­nique to great advan­tage, run­ning all over the horn and engag­ing in extend­ed tech­niques such as mul­ti­phon­ics, growl­ing, and pitch bends. He even, much to my delight, explores realms of tone very dif­fer­ent from what you hear on, say, his well-known record­ing of the Weber Concerto. You can read a more gen­er­al review of the album on the Between Sound and Space blog.

I learned of the exis­tence of this album while work­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion on the bas­soon in jazz, and includ­ed it my discog­ra­phy. But at the time I was­n’t able to actu­al­ly get my hands on a copy — it has­n’t ever been rere­leased on CD. The first time I heard any of it was when Jolene Masone post­ed one track last year as part of the “Best Bassoon Week Ever!” series on her blog. That one tune blew me away, and I renewed my search for the album, final­ly snag­ging a copy on eBay.

At this point in the post, I would typ­i­cal­ly include one track trans­ferred from the album. But this time I can do one better—I man­aged to dig up and post video footage of Thunemann with the Michael Naura Quintet play­ing “Salvatore” at the Kongresshalle in Frankfurt am Main, September 27, 1974:

Be sure to check out the free impro­vi­sa­tion (includ­ing bas­soon mul­ti­phon­ics), which starts around the 10-minute mark in this live ver­sion. And if that’s not your thing, the band returns to the form around 12:25.