Ben & The Bassoon
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Welcome to Benjamin Siwiec's bassoon page. I'm a first-year graduate student at Northern Arizona University.
This is my tenth year of playing bassoon and since I'm 23, that's getting to be near half of my life. Here's a little bit about me. When I was younger, I took piano lessons for a while, then I actually played oboe in middle school before settling on bassoon. That was at the recommendation of my high school orchestra conductor, Marcus Tsutakawa, who was in need of a bassoonist when I started high school. He sent me to Francine Peterson and I'm studied with her for 9 years. The next four years were great, playing in the Garfield High School Orchestra bassoon section and in the Seattle Youth Symphony orchestras. Tsustakawa took us on trips each year including one to Japan. Following high school, I decided to stay in Washington and go to WWU in Bellingham. That way I could still study with Francine and get lots of playing in. Depending on the quarter, I played in Wind Symphony, Orchestra, a wind quintet, Collegium Musicum and other ensembles. I also played lots of contrabassoon--I played the Dorff Contrabassoon Concerto for a jury last year! This year I don't have as much time for music since I'm a teaching assistant in the geology department here, but I am making time for the NAU orchestra and chamber ensembles. My bassoon is a Fox-Renard Model 240 that I bought new in the fall of 1994. I think it's a good match for my Heckel CD #3 bocal. The contra I used at WWU was Fox Contrabassoon #83, built in 1980 and owned by Western Washington University. It was just overhauled recently, so it's in great shape! If you haven't ever seen a contrabassoon before, there are pictures on this page--in real life, they are made of about 15 feet of maple doubled over several times to stand over four feet tall (it doesn't come apart, so it's case is nearly five feet long!) During my first few years of college I wanted to follow the music track and become professional some day. Since then I've decided that it might not be what I want from life. I began studying geology and I got hooked. At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be a geologist and not a professional musician, but it's important that music and bassoon remain a big part of my life. Feel free to write me!  My bassoon is a Renard model 240 and it looks very much like the bassoon in this photo. 
 As you can see, there is never a wrong time to play bassoon! |
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Quotes-- Frank Zappa German poet and musician, Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-1791) on the bassoon: (...)In solo work the bassoon has the purest tenor, decending to the lowest notes and a certain comic irony, rising again to the tenor F and through artistry again to the high tenor F, brilliant in the high register as in the lower: it demands the fullest breath and such a sound and manly embouchure that very few people can attain mastery at its playing. The tone of the instrument is so sociable, so communicative, so in tune with every unspoiled listener that certainly the last day of the world will find many thousand bassoons around us. Irwin Schulhof, on his piece, Bass Nachtigall for unaccompanied Contrabassoon: ..."the divine spark may be dormant in a piece of black pudding just as well as in the double bassoon. Wherefore I dedicate this composition for digestion' to all friends of lyrical poetry and aesthetes - in brief to all friends of discriminating taste. As others play their sweet melancholy tunes on the violin, I for my part do just the opposite - mind you - only to make you mad, you tiny minions, witty gigolos, salon intellectuals in horn-rimmed spectacles, you pathological tea blossoms and withered Expressionists. - I hereby shamelessly declare that I arose from dirt, and that I am in love with dirt. You, however, were born wearing ironed-out trousers and spick-and-span evening jackets - you snobbish brutes, you! If I wish to keep you at a distance, I put my monocle firmly on, thereby commanding your respect!!!" LinksThe International Double Reed Society Website Forrests Music Virtual Double Reed Shop Keith Bowen Bassoon Workshop Podium Music--they sell music for dozens of ensemble combinations The Contrabassoon homepage by David DeJarnett Bassoon, Reeds, and More... by Christian Davidsson Brian's Double Reed Page Second Bassoon!! ASU Bassoon Studio--Jeffrey Lyman Ann Hodge Double Reed Supplies Charles Double Reed Company Landwell Reed Knives Bassoon Poetry Fox Contrabassoon |
This background is borrowed from Vancouver bassoonist Jesse Read's website.
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Last Modified September 5, 2001 by Benjamin Siwiec