The past few days have been spent packing up my room… and playing my last paid gig of the school year, at Eastman’s Community Music School! Although I had to wake up early after a late night of packing and a trip to the grocery store which ended in the happy purchase of Coca-Cola made from real sugar, playing for six classes of three and four year olds was actually incredibly fun and rewarding. Sappy and cliche, maybe, but as a bassoonist I like the fact that somebody’s trying to make sure that the children of today actually know what a bassoon is. Until I had the instrument in my hands, I had no idea what a bassoon was.
Playing for little kids is also gratifying because they think you’re super awesome. In ten years, those kids will probably think the bassoon is a nerdy diversion for lamesters, but right now it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen. That’s my favorite thing about them: they really don’t care if anybody else thinks they’re cool. They like what they like, they oooh and ahhh over a bassoon, they pull their socks high over their leggings. (Incidentally, I am both amused and gratified that the clothes I wore as a little girl are in fashion — the girls in my elementary school may have teased me, but apparently I was secretly a visionary. Or something.) I want to keep that childlike wonder, which I know is cliche, but imagine if every time I took my bassoon out of the case, I was taken aback by how ridiculously blessed I am, to be standing in front of such an awkwardly beautiful instrument, the product of so much care on the part of its creators. I think it would mean more to practice well, to keep improving.
And to be honest, one of the perks of playing for little kids is the reassurance that if I ever have children, they might actually love the bassoon even more than me! A girl should always dream big, right?
I read this post. And I thought you should know. And I thought you’d like to know.
It’s interesting how excited children when they see and hear the bassoon. I’m glad that in a contest between the bassoon and any other woodwind many of the little kids would pick me.
I’d hope that my future children would like the bassoon more than I, but I’m sure they’d see me, and anything that I do, as uncool.
Although, I’d love to meet a kid who says “Bassoon, ew! My dad plays bassoon!”