A bassoonist on a mission:

I decided to write this book because the world needs more bassoonists. I have written it for current and future music educators and bassoon students. While it is always best for a student to work with a teacher, this resource provides the necessary written information, illustrations, videos, and exercises for a student to make progress on their own.

The goal of this resource is to provide depth and breadth of information in a single, complete, and easily accessible resource. There are dozens of websites and videos that offer excellent tips and suggestions for playing the bassoon. Unfortunately, music teachers don’t have the luxury of time to visit all of these sites looking for much needed information. It is my hope that this volume will empower more teachers to confidently promote the bassoon and recruit more students to play the bassoon in their ensembles.

This book began as a course pack I developed for Bassoon Techniques, a course I have taught every semester since joining the faculty at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music in the fall of 2006. The course is required for all band track music education majors and covers the fundamentals of teaching and playing the bassoon. The class is made up of a mix of woodwind, brass, and percussion students with an occasional string, piano, or vocal student. The class is capped at 12 so that students do not have to share instruments.

Band track music education majors at Crane take individual courses on each instrument rather than the typical one-size-fits-all woodwind and brass methods courses.  In its current format, Bassoon Techniques, meets twice a week for 7 weeks. I am grateful to have the luxury of just under 12 hours of instruction time dedicated solely to the bassoon. But even 11+ hours is not enough time to cover everything a future teacher needs to know. This book serves as a reminder of the information covered in class as well as an extended resource to cover what we don’t get to during the semester.

Why are there so few bassoonists?

I remember it like it was yesterday.

“It is 9:15 on a chilly Friday morning and I am sitting on the stage in the cafeteria of an elementary school watching 3rd graders stream into the room. They’re talking excitedly to their friends as they sit on the floor.  As members of the Augusta Symphony Orchestra’s Reed Trio, my colleagues and I are waiting to begin our 30-minute performance titled “A Musical Time Machine.” As part of the presentation, we talk about our instruments. When I stand up to talk about the bassoon, I hear some of the students say “wow” and “cool” and their reactions get even better as I move through my spiel.

The instruments in our ensemble are oboe, clarinet, and bassoon and we play for around 25-30 schools every year. At the end of our presentations the students are hooked!  They ask lots of questions and are obviously excited about playing an instrument.”

Why then are young bassoonists so rarely a part of middle and high school music programs? What happened between the Augusta Reed Trio’s elementary school presentations and beginning band that dimmed all of the wonderful enthusiasm students had for the bassoon?

This problem is not unique to Georgia. In 2020 Shannon Lowe surveyed music directors across the United States about bassoons in their programs and received responses from 402 directors from 45 states. This survey revealed that 60.7 % of music programs across the US have only one or no student bassoonists.”¹  The answer to why so few bassoonists is varied and complex, but it usually focuses on three areas: 1) cost, 2) availability of instrument(s), and 3) the director’s lack of confidence teaching the bassoon.

Cost: The bassoon is an expensive instrument to purchase and maintain. Bassoon reeds are fragile and expensive.

Availability of instrument(s): School music programs often don’t have bassoons, and if they do, they are rarely in playable condition.

Addressing cost and availability is beyond my means, but I can address the lack of confidence experienced by music teachers. Empowering music teachers and students by busting the myth that bassoon is “the hardest instrument” is the purpose of this book.