Posts by Category:
Books/Movies
DIY
Editions
History
Jazz and Pop
Pedagogy
Recordings
Reed Making
Repertoire
Reviews
DIY
Editions
History
Jazz and Pop
Pedagogy
Recordings
Reed Making
Repertoire
Reviews
Most of the early recordings that feature the bassoon did so in a comical fashion. A handful of artists recorded Quentin Ashlyn’s song “The Bassoon” in the first decades of the 20th century, and I have in my collection a couple of very strange (at least to modern ears) “laughing records” from the same era that include the bassoon. In 1911, Carl Borgwald recorded Julius Fučík’s classic “Der Alte Brummbär” in 1911 (released as “Polka Fantastique” in the U.S.). And in 1918, Edison released two somewhat silly piccolo/bassoon duets: “The Elephant and The Fly” and “The Nightingale and the Frog”, […]
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 […]