Search - Cayla Bellamy, J. Benjamin Smith :: Cayla Bellamy & J. Benjamin Smith: Double or Nothing - Music for Solo & Duio Basssoon

Young bassoonists frequently enter the musical world alone, with perhaps a weekly private teacher to guide them, but otherwise lacking compatriots in their newfound double reed existence. They strive to develop a concept of sound via the non-bassoon timbres surrounding them in performance and the digital recordings of far away bassoonists, and rarely do those recordings represent the works they are performing or the technical and expressive possibilities of two bassoons playing together. To this end, the works on this album are new or largely unrecorded and celebrate both the independence of bassoonists and solidarity of our world. Repertoire featured here presents the bassoon only on its own or in duo with another- the instrument in its most raw form. Cayla Bellamy currently serves as Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the University of Northern Iowa. She is also a core bassoonist and contrabassoonist with wcfsymphony and has performed across the United States. J. Benjamin Smith began his professional career as a freelance bassoonist. He went on to serve in the United States Navy, and now teaches privately in Houston, Texas.