TuBassoon with modern dancers during a U‑Nite promo shoot for Good Day Sacramento. (Craig Koscho, Sac State Public Affairs)
On the evening of April 11th, I performed as part of the second annual U‑Nite, a mini-festival of the arts at Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum. The event featured faculty and students from the various parts of Sacramento State’s College of Arts and Letters. Performers and exhibitors were stationed around the museum, presenting short programs of music, dance, film, theater, visual arts, and the written word. My colleague Julian Dixon and I played in one of the galleries as the duo TuBassoon.
Surrounded by gorgeous California landscape paintings, we played 25–30 minutes of music drawn from numerous sources. We had previously played P.D.Q. Bach’s “Dutch” Suite for bassoon and tuba, so that was an easy choice. Although there are at least a couple of other works written specifically for bassoon and tuba, we ended up adapting the rest of our repertoire from other sources. We played the first movement of Mozart’s gorgeous Sonata, K. 292 (for bassoon and cello), one movement of a Telemann canonic sonata, and a suite of short tuba duets by Walter Sear.
The morning of U‑Nite, Julian and I were part of a live segment on the morning show Good Day Sacramento. We’re playing P.D.Q. Bach’s “Panther Dance” in the background while reporter Courtney Dempsey interviews U‑Nite’s organizers:
Incidentally, if TuBassoon continues, we might just have to make Courtney’s description our motto. Tubassoon: A lil’ tuba, a lil’ bassoon.
After our evening performance, I was able to catch Citywater’s performance of a new piece by Stephen Blumberg, which was great. But unfortunately, between grabbing a bite to eat from the museum café, getting set up, and talking to audience members after our performance, that was all I was able to take in. But this video collage from Sac State’s Office of Public Affairs provides an excellent overview of what I missed, and shows off the excellent range and diversity of the event:
