The bassoon is a complex musical instrument. It is a horn with six parts called mouthpiece, boot, bell, bore, joint and reed. The history of the bassoon dates back to the mid-16th century, but now the Sooner Bassooners are playing it hard. It is an ensemble of 15 music students led by Professor Rodney Ackmann at the University of Oklahoma School of Music.
The bassoon has been played in virtually every genre of music over the past 200 years, from Igor Stravinksy’s “Rite of Spring” to British rapper Stormzy’s “Gang Signs and Prayers.” Interestingly, the bassoon’s general reputation in the playing world is that of a sonic deceiver.
“It’s not particularly accurate, but the bassoon is known as the ‘clown of the orchestra,’ and we hear it all the time,” Ackmann said. “We often get these bouncy parts that you hear in cartoon music. The most famous would be ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ where it’s a major feature of Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia,’ which puts a smile on everyone’s face. It’s a tuning tapper, but the bassoon can do so much more. It’s a very lyrical instrument.”
The bassoon is three and a half octaves and the contrabassoon a quarter octave, giving the player plenty of range to work with. Sometimes a bassoon’s register can resemble the human voice.
“I really like the bassoon ensemble and what it can do musically,” he said.
Ackmann is a jovial and enthusiastic guy perfectly suited to inspire students to excel in playing the bassoon. He came to OU in 2012 after teaching for seven years at the University of Missouri.
Ackmann is now the Irene and Julius J. Rothbaum Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Arts, also performs as a member of the Oklahoma Wind Quintet, the Norman Philharmonic and as principal bassoon of the Oklahoma Philharmonic City.
“I had a bassoon ensemble at MU and I walked into a situation here where there was already a Sooner Bassooners from the mid-1980s,” Ackmann said. “I was very fortunate in that and Carl Rath, my predecessor, taught here for 32 years doing wonderful things. We’ve had some building to do in terms of numbers and quality. It comes down to recruiting that’s part of the job and that I like.”
In 2012 there were four Sooner Fassooner students and in 2023 there are fifteen. This academic year’s ensemble was invited to perform at the prestigious Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago, Illinois, last month. Hundreds of schools applied and Sooner Bassooners was one of forty chosen.
“It’s wonderful to have students from different backgrounds, primarily bassoons who study with me weekly, many are bassoonists from all over the state and juggling all of that with rehearsals and their diverse schedules can be challenging,” Ackmann said.
Today, the Sooner Bassooners are an almost evenly split group from California to Peoria, Illinois. Some of these students have degrees in astrophysics or journalism, but they play the bassoon. Ackmann learns from them.
“That’s one of the best parts,” he said. “This group became more collaborative with themselves, always with the utmost respect. A freshman might raise their hand and say “I think we’re too strong here,” or it might be a graduate student. Everyone is intervening. We hear it, we can try it, and it usually helps. So their perspective is wonderful and they work together. My challenge is knowing when to lead and when to stay out of the way.”
To date, this iteration of the Sooner Bassooners has performed publicly on four occasions. The logistics of fifteen musicians with somewhat unwieldy instruments in certain performance spaces can present opportunities for problem solving.
“They love to perform and for the School of Music’s Mosaic concert they were placed on the balcony above the main stage of the Sharp Concert Hall,” Ackmann said. “It presented some logistical challenges because you have to be able to see and hear yourself with a little bit of elbow room. We had to really refine it to create that arch. With the performance time we found a way to make it comfortable.”
Last October, Ackmann led the Sooner Bassooners in a performance of our national anthem before an Oklahoma City Thunder NBA game (video posted on YouTube).
“It was 90 seconds of joy for all of us,” he said. “These students are best friends, they have bonded socially. We do backyard bassoon shindigs or if there’s a chance, we go to the Hideway and get pizza together.”
The students have a high university level of musical virtuosity but it is not really a competitive atmosphere.
“Thirty percent of the group is new this year,” Ackmann said. “New ones, like first-semester students come in and say, ‘Oh, this is what’s expected of me,’ which fascinates me and gives me great joy.”
Sooner Bassooners’ Spring Recital is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. March 1 in the Catlett Music Center’s Pitman Recital Hall (streaming live at ou.edu/fine). The concert is free and open to the public.
