Bassoon Gig at Cornell

April 6-11

I (Joyce) have had a fun opportunity to sit in on Ithaca College bassoon studio rep classes. In addition to just sitting in to listen, I got to coach two sessions for contrabassoon. I'm not extremely confident in my ability to help anyone else play contra, but I guess it is one of the those instruments where a little experience goes a long way! I really enjoyed sharing my limited contrabassoon knowledge, but mostly I loved hearing how the Ithaca students have helped each other learn the instrument and have shared fingerings that I didn't know.

The other bonus of playing a somewhat less popular instrument like the bassoon is that I got to play with the Festival Chamber Orchestra at Cornell. It was the composers' studio recital, so the music was brand new. Some of it was challenging, but a lot of the bassoon parts were pretty tame.

Two of the musicians in the chamber orchestra were Lincoln, NE natives who now live in Rochester and Ithaca, NY. The funny part was that I knew that about each of them individually before they knew it about each other. It's a small world after all.