Hello. My name is Christine, and I play the bassoon.

I do. I really do. I've played it since I was 11 and decided that, after playing the clarinet for one year, there were too many clarinetists and I needed to play something more unique. Once upon a time I was even quite good. Good enough to consider, however fleeting the moment, pursuing it as a career choice. For the first two years of college, it was my minor. What in the heck I ever though I'd do with that degree and that skill, we'll never know.


But wanting a degree in four years put an end to private lessons (though not to ensembles), and having children and maintaining a home put a major hold on such frivolities as playing an instrument while being a mom. Now I'm happy to pick it up again after a two-year hiatus.


If you know nothing about bassoons, go here. And if you didn't catch my hidden story about the origins behind the word "bassoon" and my experience with said origins, then go here.

Please ignore the materity-top-and-

thin-pajama-pants ensemble. Please.

I'm rusty, to be sure. I'm wildly out of tune most of the time, which, orchestra and band members will know, is kind of easy on the bassoon. But I haven't dealt with being wildly out of tune since, like, junior high, so I feel pretty foolish most of the time. Plus I wear myself out after 15 minutes, which only adds to the general air of foolishness.

I'm playing in a bassoon ensemble with five other bassoonists (one of whom plays the contrabassoon!) organized by my bassoon professor from college. I'm more insecure on my instrument than I have been at anything in years, and it doesn't help that my old prof sort of expects me to rise to the occasion and immediately resume my tenor-clef-reading, high-note-hitting ways. His expectations are flattering and exasperating all at once.


But you know what? I enjoy it so much. I truly and deeply, all the way into my bones, love playing this instrument, and I love the familiar feel of it in my hands. I love how finicky the tuning is and how impossible it is to get my reed just right. I love refamiliarizing myself with tenor clef, with my high notes, and with the intricacies of a spit swab. I love that excess spit is a part of it all. I. Love. It. All.

I'd even go so far as to say I love it despite my bassoon envy. You see, I don't own my own instrument--never have. They can be rather expensive, after all, so I've never been able to purchase my own. (Once I had the pleasure and simultaneous terror of briefly playing on a bassoon worth $40,000. I am not even kidding.) And while I understand in my head that it would be pure foolishness to even put out a modest $5,000-7,000 for a used student model, as I don't play the instrument with enough regularity to justify such a purchase, my heart still desperately wants one. Right now I'm borrowing one from the university; to make you feel even sadder for me, I'll reveal that I'm having to share it with a student. (Yick.)

But despite all that pure wantwantwant, I still love playing it, borrowed spit and all.


Even though now, when I practice, I'm surrounded by toys, high chairs, and curious children.

Hello. My name is Christine, and I play the bassoon.