Campbell’s Album of New Works for Bassoon

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

Jefferson Campbell is Professor of Bassoon in the Department of Music and Associate Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He has been commissioning composers to create new works for the bassoon since 2003. This past spring MSR Classics released Pocket Grooves, which may be described as a portfolio of the music resulting from those commissions.

The album consists of six recent works by five composers. It all likelihood the names of all of those composers will be unfamiliar to most readers. In “order of appearance” on the album, they are Graeme Shields, Jess Hendricks, Steven Moellering, Gene Koshinski, and Brad Bombardier. Koshinski is responsible for the “title composition” of the album, a suite of three short movements that reflect contrary influences from sacred Muslim chant and South American styles. Pocket Grooves is scored for bassoon and modest percussion resources (played by Koshinski); and none of the movements outstays its welcome. Neither does an “appendix” performance of Koshinski’s “Get It!,” also scored for bassoon and percussion.

Similarly, Shields, Hendricks, and Moellering all provide collections of short movements. The Shields and Moellering pieces include piano accompaniment, while the accompaniment for the Hendricks piece requires electronics. Throughout the album Campbell evokes a diverse breadth of sonorities, reflecting the versatility of his instrument. However, the real treat comes towards the end of the album with Bombardier’s “Bassoon Rawk,” which has the soloist accompanied by an ensemble of eight bassoons and one contrabassoon. This was a “studio-made” recording, since Campbell played all ten parts. However, any shortcoming of spontaneity was compensated by no end of imaginative blends of the instruments’ sonorities.

The album concludes with two arrangements, neither of which involved Campbell commissions. Paul Nordby provided the commission for “A Steamboat Lullaby.” It was based on a melody improvised by Bruce Grainger, bassoonist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra prior to his early death. Truman Bullard arranged the tune for bassoon and piano.

The other arrangement is Campbell’s own of Steven Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music. Campbell’s notes for the program book suggests that he was unfamiliar with the context for this song, knowing it only through the Frank Sinatra recording that turned it into a hit tune. Sondheim, of course, wrote the words for this song, as well as the music; and there is a simplicity to the score that was clearly designed to make sure that every last word has full impact. As a result, an account of just the music is likely to register only with those that already know the words and the implications of their context. As a result, the only viable approach to arrangement must allow the music to can stand on its own merits, which is basically what Ethan Iverson did for Anthony de Mare’s album project Liaisons: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano. Campbell’s approach, on the other hand, leaves the listener feeling as if the tune has been repeated too many times.