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DIY
Editions
History
Jazz and Pop
Pedagogy
Recordings
Reed Making
Repertoire
Reviews
I have long intended to write more here about specific jazz recordings that include bassoon. I have many favorites spanning basically the whole history of jazz, which I’ll get to eventually. But I’ve decided to start with a recent album from a band that’s new to me. Last month I received a copy of The Bright and Rushing World by Douglas Detrick’s AnyWhen Ensemble (thanks, Dad!). This, the group’s third album, was recorded in 2012 and released in March of this year. I’ve been listening to the disc on and off over the past few weeks, and I quite enjoy it. […]
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 […]
In my ongoing quest to find bassoons in unexpected places, I’ve uncovered a new gem. The Mo (or sometimes simply “Mo”) was a Dutch New Wave band formed in 1979 by brothers Clemens and Huub de Lange. The band had a couple of incarnations, but its initial lineup included singer Heili Helder, drummer Harm Bieger, Clemens de Lange on keyboards, and Huub de Lange on key boards and—you guessed it—bassoon. Huub de Lange appears to be known mostly as a choral composer now; here’s his ChoralWiki page. I wrote to him asking some questions about the band, but got no […]
My main area of research in the past few years has been the use of the bassoon in jazz; in fact, I wrote my dissertation on the subject. But I’ve thus far neglected writing about it here, mostly because there’s too much information to condense into a single blog post! I’ll get around to writing a historical overview at some point, but for now, suffice it to say that there have been hundreds of jazz recordings (close to a thousand, actually) that include bassoonists in various roles, dating back to at least the early 1920s. Today, as a starting point, I’m […]
I keep a variety of online feelers out for bassoon-related things. Much of what comes back to me is spam or otherwise uninteresting. But, I do find out about articles and concerts that I might not otherwise. My favorite sort of discoveries, though, are of obscure and often long-forgotten bits of bassoon miscellany. That’s exactly what I came across a couple of weeks ago in the record whose cover you see below. It’s a 7‑inch 45 rpm single by the Novelty Disco Band, recorded and pressed in France in 1977. After finding mention of it online, I bought a copy […]