My pedagogy is based on two lineages of bassoon pedagogy taught to me by Frank Morelli and Fei Xie. Through their teaching, I have learned how to play music on the bassoon at a high level and use a hybrid of their methods to help students reach their full potential.
Optimal musical performance relies on the mastery of 4 levels of skill.
Fundamentals. A student must have control of the fundamentals of the bassoon - able to navigate the instrument with stable intonation and quality sound across a spectrum of dynamics and articulations.
Linking fundamentals to music. These fundamentals need to remain in place as the student expands their expressive gestures—creating musical shapes, phrasing long lines, etc.
Persuasive interpretation. Musical gestures and phrases must be shaped and related to one another in a thoughtful and compelling manner. A student should be able to put phrases together in such a way that the music they play makes sense on a macro-level.
Performance. For many musicians, myself included, the act of performing is anxiety-inducing and can throw off even extensive preparation. All the above elements must be consistently executed in a performance setting, requiring regular practice performing and managing the many difficulties it poses.
Students of mine will use the following approaches to master each of the above four pillars of bassoon playing:
Scales, Long Tones, Intervals, Tonguing Exercises, and other fundamental drills will be prescribed to the student as needed. Each of these fundamentals will be demonstrated, tested, and honed in lessons. The student will learn to accept the imperfections inherent to instrumental performance and recontextualize fundamental practice as an exploratory method of improvement. Every “error” is an opportunity for growth.
Technical Etudes will help the student with applying a focus on finger technique, intonation, flowing musical line, beauty of sound, and more technical essentials in varied keys and common musical gestures.
Musical Etudes, excerpts, and solo pieces will teach the student how to put together the building blocks learned above to make compelling and beautiful music. The student will learn how to execute all styles of music effectively on the bassoon and how to make informed artistic choices.
Every lesson will begin with performances of assigned materials, allowing students to deal with the pressures of performance in the lesson. As a student advances, the amount of material assigned for weekly performance will increase according to the readiness of that student. If issues such as performance anxiety or suboptimal performance compared to preparation arise, I will work individually with the student to resolve these difficulties. The student will be encouraged to treat weekly lessons as tests of their performance ability and develop a different relationship with performance that is less perfectionistic and more realistic.
As bassoonists, reedmaking is an essential part of our craft. Students will learn to make reeds in the Herzberg style. A student with prior experience making reeds in another style, or who prefers another style, is welcome to make reeds in that style and will receive as much or as little guidance on reed adjustment, blank making, and cane processing as they like.
Students with enough practice making reeds are encouraged to play on a new reed in every private lesson—in other words, a reed that was clipped and worked on in the preceding week. Developing a routine for making quality reeds on a regular basis is a crucial facet of playing bassoon.
Lessons with me will develop the ability to work hard without becoming overly stressed. A core aspect of my pedagogy is using the material prepared for lessons as a pedagogical tool to teach students how to prepare efficiently and cope effectively with stress. These skills are transferable to any field in life, and I hope to pass them on to my students.