For several years, I’ve maintained what I believe to be a fairly comprehensive list of woodwind doublers’ homepages. I’ve been scouring the web lately for the homepages of woodwind players of all kinds, and have put together several new lists from what I’ve found. Now you can browse lists of:
- Flutists
- Oboists
- Clarinetists
- Bassoonists
- Saxophonists
- Players of folk, ethnic, or period woodwinds
- And, of course, woodwind doublers
I mostly like to include personal websites. I don’t really take the time to seek out bio pages from, say, orchestra or band websites, or university faculty bios, or MySpace pages, although I am generally happy enough to add them if someone submits them for inclusion (email me). I’m not picky about ability level—people on these lists range from enthusiastic beginners to world-class professionals.
The folk and ethnic woodwind players list currently only includes musicians who play multiple ethnic instruments or play ethnic instruments in addition to one or more major modern woodwinds, but I’m open to expanding this in the future and I welcome submissions.
Depending on your web browser, if you hover the mouse pointer over a person’s name, you may see a little tooltip pop up, showing you what instruments the person plays. (Try this one: Bret Pimentel) There are a few on the doublers list that only show one instrument; these are cases where the player’s homepage indicates woodwind doubling ability but doesn’t specify which instruments.
While searching through websites, I had a few thoughts about musicians’ homepages. If you have one, or are thinking about getting one, consider the following:
- Custom domain names are cheap and at least 1000% more professional than hosting on free sites. Spring, for example, for bretpimentel.com rather than www.geocities.com/bpimentel.
- By all means, include some quality sound clips. But don’t force them on your visitors—let them click “play” to listen, rather than having the music start automatically and unexpectedly.
- Especially if you are a professional or semi-professional player, be clear about what you do. A surprising number of musicians’ websites make you search long and hard to find out what instrument(s) they play.