Posts in Pedagogy

figaro-combined
March 14, 2016

Writing Cadenzas for Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto

In Fall 2014, I was lucky enough to be invit­ed to play Mozart’s Bas­soon Con­cer­to, K. 191 with Sac State’s Uni­ver­si­ty Orches­tra under the direc­tion of Leo Eylar. The Mozart con­cer­to is the piece that fol­lows bas­soon­ists around for their entire careers. A teacher once told me: There are two types of audi­tions: ones that ask for the Mozart con­cer­to, and ones that ask for a con­cer­to of your choice, which means play the Mozart concerto. I’ve worked on the Mozart con­cer­to on and off since high school, have played it for count­less audi­tions, and have per­formed it with piano accom­pa­ni­ment. […]
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Bassoonasana
June 21, 2013

Bassoonasana ‑or- Yoga and the Bassoon

2025 Update: I wrote this post in 2013, and now haven’t prac­ticed hot yoga in years. I’m back to swim­ming as my pri­ma­ry mode of exer­cise, with some restora­tive yoga, strength train­ing, and cycling mixed in. But I think the points below still stand, and many of them are cer­tain­ly trans­ferrable to oth­er dis­ci­plined forms of exercise. I start­ed prac­tic­ing hot yoga about a year and a half ago. The stu­dio I attend is devot­ed to Bikram Yoga, a form of Hatha yoga that con­sists of a pre­scribed series of 26 pos­tures and two breath­ing exer­cis­es done in a 105°F […]
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February 27, 2013

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Bassoon Concerto

When I was work­ing on my Mas­ter’s degree at Flori­da State, I had the great for­tune to have a les­son with Pulitzer Prize-Win­ning com­pos­er Ellen Taaffe Zwilich on her Con­cer­to for Bas­soon and Orches­tra (1992). At the time, I wrote up a lit­tle report on my expe­ri­ence and post­ed it on a pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of my web site. I’d more-or less for­got­ten about it (the post, not the expe­ri­ence!) until a cou­ple of days ago. My friend and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Nico­lasa Kuster men­tioned that she’d found it while search­ing for infor­ma­tion on the con­cer­to. I’ve decid­ed to repost my expe­ri­ences […]
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February 26, 2012

The Way of Tea, The Way of Bassoon

The library at Sacra­men­to State boasts a fea­ture which is, I believe, unique among Amer­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic libraries: a Japan­ese tea room. The Sokiku Nakatani Tea Room, which was ded­i­cat­ed in 2007, was the gift of an anony­mous donor and is named after a long-time Sacra­men­to-area prac­ti­tion­er of Cha­do (more on this term soon). The tea room sits in the library’s base­ment, with win­dows look­ing out onto a small adja­cent gar­den that is clev­er­ly tucked away from the hus­tle and bus­tle above. In addi­tion to hous­ing a col­lec­tion of tea ware and tea prepa­ra­tion uten­sils, the tea room peri­od­i­cal­ly hosts tea […]
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© 2025 David A. Wells