Bassoon... ( see also: Double Tonguing / Solo perf's / Fingerings )

I started playing the bassoon in 1975, aged 15, following on from one year playing clarinet. My first instrument was a Chinese 'Lark', which I butchered with a metal saw - much to my school tutor's horror (as it belonged to him!), when I cut 150mm off the crook to raise its too low pitch up to A440. My first performance in December 1975 was in Handel's Messiah. I joined the Auckland Youth Symphonic Band in 1976 and started to play their new Sonora bassoon.

Whilst still at High School, I played Eb Tuba in the school band for a year, as well as conducting the junior division of the band. I occasionally tried out flutes and saxes from the band storeroom and even bought an oboe and open-holed flute before trading them in on my first owned bassoon, a Huller, in 1979. Other instruments include a piano accordeon my parents bought for me when I was 13, and I owned a Mark IV Selmer baritone sax for a few years in the early 2000's.

I moved to Sydney, Australia in March 1980 and bought a professional Fox bassoon (Model 1, long bore) in October that year - although it took several years to eventually pay the bank loan off and really own it. I undertook paid lessons from Jonas Moham-Wild, a thoroughly trained Paris-born player, before being granted a scholarship to the NSW Conservatorium of Music in 1981 and 1982, to study with Gordon Skinner - the previous Principal Bassoon of the NZSO before he moved to Australia in 1980 as well. I bought a Sonora contrabassoon in 1984 (although sold it in 2000). I performed countless orchestral concerts, numerous operas and some concertos with several large amateur orchestras in Sydney during my over four years there, and gained the diplomas FTCL, LRSM and AMusA (Dist).

I returned to New Zealand in 1985 and commenced as Principal Bassoon in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra from January, 1986. Personal highlights during nearly 20 years of being in the APO included playing for 'The Three Tenors' (Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti), although each in New Zealand at different times, and working with many wonderful conductors, such as the Rumanian, Erich Bergel, the Russian, Vladimir Verbitsky and Mexican, Enrique Deimecke. From 2002, I moved across to the available Associate Principal position, but eventually my circumstances changed and I left the orchestra in September 2004 to follow a grand idea towards financial and lifestyle self sufficiency - which eventually took me to a rural country town 150 km's north of Auckland for one year.

Since returning to Auckland in April 2007, I continue to freelance and play 1st bassoon in the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and (in Auckland) Bach Musica and Pipers Sinfonia, and occasionally with all of the major orchestras around New Zealand. In 2011 I bought a new Amati contrabassoon; in 2015 a very good Heckel bassoon made in 1929; in 2023 two French system bassoons (a 1920's Buffet and 1890's Triebert); in 2024 a Moeck baroque bassoon (after Jacob Denner @ 440Hz) made in 1990's.