Instruments

In addi­tion to play­ing and teach­ing the “reg­u­lar” (mod­ern) bas­soon, I spend a great deal of my time with his­tor­i­cal bas­soons of var­i­ous sorts. Most com­mon­ly, I use these in his­tor­i­cal­ly-informed per­for­mances with groups who are all play­ing instru­ments that are close to what the com­pos­er would have known.

Far from just being stripped-down ver­sions of mod­ern instru­ments, these his­tor­i­cal instru­ments often sound dif­fer­ent, feel dif­fer­ent to the play­er, and even require very dif­fer­ent play­ing tech­niques. Play­ing these instru­ments in a his­tor­i­cal­ly-informed way often grants insights into why com­posers wrote cer­tain fig­ures, or set pieces in par­tic­u­lar keys, or even used a par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tion of instruments.

Most impor­tant­ly of all, this deep­er under­stand­ing on the part of the per­form­ers gen­er­al­ly trans­lates into per­for­mances that can be more excit­ing and engag­ing for the audi­ence! See the gallery below for a bit more about each of my instruments.