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Wikipedia on the Bassoon

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
Staff member
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The Wikipedia has a rather extensive piece on the Bassoon. I found this particularly interesting:

Jazz
The bassoon is infrequently used as a jazz instrument and rarely seen in a jazz ensemble. It first began appearing at all in the 1920s, including specific calls for its use in Paul Whiteman's group and a few other session appearances. The next few decades saw the instrument used only sporadically, as symphonic jazz fell out of favor, but the 1960s saw artists such as Yusef Lateef and Chick Corea incorporate bassoon into their recordings; Lateef's diverse and eclectic instrumentation saw the bassoon as a natural addition, while Corea employed the bassoon in combination with flautist Hubert Laws.

More recently, Illinois Jacquet and Frank Tiberi have both doubled on bassoon in addition to their usual saxophone performances. Bassoonist Karen Borca, a performer of free jazz, is one of the few jazz musicians to play only bassoon; Michael Rabinowitz, the Spanish bassoonist Javier Abad, and James Lassen, an American resident in Bergen, Norway, are others. Lindsay Cooper, Paul Hanson,the Brasilian bassoonist Alexandre Silverio, and Daniel Smith are also currently using the bassoon in jazz. French bassoonists Jean-Jacques Decreux[1] and Alexandre Ouzounoff[2] have both recorded jazz, exploiting the flexibility of the Buffet system instrument to good effect.
 
Jazz Bassoon

Let's not forget Ray Pizzi. Don't know how long he's been playing jazz bassoon, but he was the first that I ran across -- decades ago.

Enjoy,

Grant
 
Agreed--Ray Pizzi seems a conspicuous omission from the Wikipedia list. So much so that I edited him in. (Take him back out if you disagree. That's the way Wikipedia works.)

I've heard Michael Rabinowitz a few times at IDRS conferences, and he does some nice stuff.

But I'm REALLY knocked out by Paul Hanson's playing. http://www.youtube.com/jazzbassoonpaul
 
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