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. […]
I’m very excited today to release something to the world on which I’ve spent a great deal of time: a new performing edition of Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor for bassoon, strings, and basso continuo (RV 495), prepared using a copy of Vivaldi’s own manuscript. You can download the whole thing (for free!) at the end of this post. But first I’d like to talk a bit about my path to the piece and my methods in creating this edition. I hope that this will all prove useful to someone out there, particularly since this is one of the […]
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 […]