Bassoon: Classical or Jazz Playing?

When you begin to play the bassoon, it is natural that you will start with classical music repertoire. When I started to play the bassoon, I heard as much as I could of bassoon recordings. I bought several recordings of great musicians, such as Klaus Thunemann, who in my opinion, is the greatest bassoonist of all times. I used to listen the concertos on Thunemann's recordings and try to play Mozart, Vivaldi and other bassoon concertos. Even though there is a huge list of repertoire to be played on the bassoon, I feel that many bassoonists around the world are willing to play something different.

When I started to play jazz on the bassoon in 1993, I was trying to learn something different from the stardard bassoon etude books. I was searching for something new to practice with my  bassoon teacher at that time, Francisco Formiga. Formiga and I were trying to find etude books in different instruments such as violin and flute and we found the Charlie Parker Omnibook in bass clef. We bought the book and I started to read that crazy music and I was astonished with that.It was so difficult to play that music and I did not have any reference of bassonists playing jazz. My reference to play jazz on the bassoon was and still is the saxophonists and pianists. I heard many recordings of amazing jazz legends for example, Gerry Mulligan (bariton saxophonist), Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Serge Chaloff , Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman, Nailor Azevedo(Proveta), Chris Potter, Dave Liebman,Paul Desmond,  Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Michel Camilo, Duke Ellington.

I try to play both styles and it is not easy to do sych thing. The reason is because you must have time enough to practice both styles. Actually,  I think that is very helpful for your playing when you learn classical and jazz because you can be much more creative.

Listen to great musicians and do it very carefully is a very important way to learn from them and also is a way to challenge yourself on how to play better.

I think that every classical musician should know at least a little bit of jazz and vice versa. In the end, these two styles are wonderful universes and complete each other.