Farewell: Buddy Collette

Notable woodwind doubler Buddy Collette, known for his skill and artistry as a jazz saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, and composer, passed away on Sunday. Check out the Los Angeles obituary, or, even better, enjoy his flute and tenor:

Tip of the hat to Eric at jazz-sax.com for bringing this sad news to my attention.

YouTubeage: Cool EWI videos

Some of my favorite EWI videos. Enjoy!


Jeff Kashiwa explains and demonstrates the Akai EWI4000s to an appreciative audience. A little loopstation fun, with some Telemann and then a smooth-jazz tune.


EWI specialist Bernie Kenerson does cool stuff with an EWI hooked up to a vocoder.

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Joe the Musician: the first rule of woodwind doubling

I’m not much of a tweeter (though you can follow my automatically-generated tweets about new blog posts). But I liked this one today from Joseph “Joe the Musician” Tomasso: Follow Joseph’s tweets here, or check out his website.

Update: Woodwind doubling in Broadway musicals

A few years back, I started compiling a little list of Broadway-style shows and their woodwind books—the printed parts the woodwind players use in the orchestra pits. It has since grown wildly out of control to over 900 shows and has firmly cemented itself as the most popular thing on this website. Many of my … Read more

New sound clips: Faculty woodwinds recital, Aug. 31, 2010

Backstage with my instruments and a space heater. Only one of us enjoys the recital hall’s powerful air conditioning.

I’m pleased to share some audio clips from my recent faculty recital at Delta State University.

It was the first evening concert of the new semester, so a nice crowd of students came to start accumulating their recital attendance points, as well as colleagues, friends, and community members. No one seemed daunted by the prospect of a solid hour of Debussy.

I enjoyed playing the flute Syrinx, clarinet Première Rapsodie, and saxophone Rapsodie, all of which I had studied in school but never performed publicly. The brief and charming clarinet Petite Pièce was new to me, and seemed to be a crowd favorite. I rounded out the recital with some of Debussy’s piano works, arranged for oboe and piano and for bassoon and piano. It works well for me to play all of the reed instruments on a recital, because that gives all my reed-playing students something to sink their teeth into, and the fabulous Dr. Shelley Collins was very gracious about me playing a flute piece on her turf. You can read my program notes here.

Having learned a couple of things from the last recital, I warmed up a little more extensively this time, and also brought in a space heater to keep my instruments warm backstage in the icy air conditioning. Both of these things seemed to help make the evening go more smoothly. One new experiment for me was the use of a bassoon harness, so I played that instrument standing up for the first time in public.

Here are the clips:

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