Word: contrabassoons
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...Born of Chinese parents in Perth before growing up in Brunei and, later, Melbourne, Lim is cross-fertilization in action. Her music embodies the process. The Alchemical Wedding, which elision premiered at the Melbourne Festival in 1996, shifts almost imperceptibly between Western and Eastern sounds, from contrabassoon to erhu (as bridegroom and bride), in a sliding scale of culture. With Inguz (1996), named after a Viking rune symbolizing fertility, the clarinet threatens to soar at any moment into Gershwin-like rhapsody, but gives birth to something else - music as anthropology. For her 2000 opera Moon Spirit Feasting, the composer spent...
...reflect a serious departure from the structures and techniques of mainstream jazz of the time. Complex, static song structures were inhibiting what Coltrane wanted to do musically and he began looking towards Eastern ethnic music for influence. Coltrane began to experiment with instrumentation to dramatic effect, using bass clarinet, contrabassoon, oboe, oud and a second bass in different combinations...
...fairy-tale images. 'Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant' benefitted from luminous solo passages by the flute and clarinet and conjured a sensuous picture of Sleeping Beauty; the plaintive and delicate waltz Ravel wrote for Beauty and the Beast received a skillful treatment from the upper woodwinds and contrabassoon. But dynamic imbalances proved frustrating here as in the concerto. Too often the less important lines were simply not sufficiently subordinated; exquisitely played solo passages in the woodwinds in 'Laideronetter,' and for the violin and viola in 'Le jardin ferrique,' were scarcely audible...
...begins, it comes as quite a shock. The very extremes of range and timbre are called for, and once again the orchestra responded well. All the solo playing was very good, particularly from flute, harp, piano, and saxophone. Pitch was excellent, including the bizarre but effective ending with contrabassoon and piccoio...
Nevertheless, Dunbar quickly satisfied the music critics who counted: the orchestra members. Said the first flutist, after Dunbar had led the men through Afro-American: "Now at last I understand your American jazz." Dunbar further won the orchestra's friendship by bringing from Paris a contrabassoon (the orchestra had lost all theirs in air raids...