Richard Turner

When WyoHistory.org published its history of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra in October 2021, the editors realized that there were many more people available to contribute their thoughts and memories of that organization. The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming was also interested, and offered to contribute funding to support an oral history project to capture more information on the history of the symphony.

The Casper College Western History Center transcribed most of these interviews. In addition to being available here, at WyoHistory.org, the audio files plus transcripts are also available at the Western History Center and the American Heritage Center.

Thanks to the interviewees for donating their time; to the Casper College Western History Center for transcribing the audio files; to Kylie McCormick for transcribing some of the audio files; to the American Heritage Center for funding the project; and to the trustees of the George Fox Fund, Inc. for donating the use of its Zoom account.

Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project

Rebecca Hein interviewing Richard Turner, June 17, 2022

Date transcribed: July 13, 2022

Rebecca: Okay.

Richard: Yeah.

Rebecca: Thank you for making yourself available.

Richard: Sure.

Rebecca: Let’s start with your name and your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument.

Richard: Oh, okay. My name is Richard Turner. I am a principal bassoonist with Wyoming Symphony. I started playing bassoon in high school. I had gone to an arts high school, and played both in band and orchestra, but I had entered the high school on bass clarinet, and was transposing bassoon parts onto bass clarinet. [To transpose is to exactly copy exactly a passage of music, starting the passage on a different pitch. Musicians do this mentally, or in writing] We were actually doing the Schubert Unfinished, [“Unfinished” Symphony, (Symphony no. 8 in B minor) by Franz Schubert, 19th century Austrian composer] and ... what I would do would be to transpose the parts beforehand on, write them out on manuscript paper. I couldn’t do it on the fly. And (clears throat) that was ending up to be a lot of sharps for a B flat instrument, [“sharp” is defined later in the interview] and I got into it and I started thinking, “you know, it’s probably gonna be easier to learn another instrument than to do this- [When a B flat instrument plays a C major scale, it will sound the same as the B Flat scale on a piano]

Rebecca: (chuckles)

Richard: -every time we play something new,” and so, I managed to get hold of an instrument that was floating around the district, and, had my first lesson on December first of that year, and really took to it very very very quickly. And had no problems with getting a decent sound out of it and things like that. And so, that was in my junior year of high school, and the rest is history.

Rebecca: Okay. I just want to back up. For those who don’t know, the Schubert Unfinished is the Schubert Unfinished Symphony. I don’t remember an opus number or anything like that, but, (trails off)

Richard: Yeah, it’s just number eight, and it’s, I think it’s in B minor? Perhaps. Something with sharps in it.

Rebecca: Ahaha! I think it’s, I think it’s B minor because I remember the opening,-

Richard: Uh-huh.

Rebecca: -that the cello section played.

Richard: Oh yeah, right. Yeah. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Okay. Great, thanks.

Richard: Uh-huh.

Rebecca: So, let’s go on to when you joined the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra.

Richard: Okay. I joined the Wyoming Symphony, actually, before I even moved to Casper, I had been living in Virginia, and was getting married, at that time, to my future and ex wife, Pamela Glasser, who was principal [French] horn in the symphony, and she was kind of selling, we were deciding, whether to live in Virginia, where I was at the time, or in Wyoming. And so I came out to-to see what Wyoming was all about, and we decided--she was teaching in junior high, I sat in on some of her classes, and said she’s way too good a teacher to risk losing, you know, not-her not being able to do that out in Virginia, and so I decided to come out here, we got married that summer, and in September of that year, I started the move out and was looking for a job. And, I flew out for, that was back when we had rehearsals over, like, a two week span, and, flew out for the sequence of rehearsals, and then flew back and moved my stuff here to relocate to Wyoming. And I did some job searches while I was out here as well, but that was how I started with the Wyoming Symphony, and that would’ve been the 1996-97 season.

Rebecca: Okay. So, let’s just briefly touch on what your day job is since I know you’re-

Richard: Uh-huh

Rebecca: quite, yeah- (undistinguishable)

Richard: Yeah, and actually that was an interesting one as well, because I am a computer programmer for the state of Wyoming, for the next five weeks at least, I’ll be retiring in five weeks, and I got that job, actually because of the symphony connection, that, Pamela was quite the social butterfly and we ended up having a dinner over at somebody’s house, and I met with [Bob] Johnson who had actually played bassoon for the Wyoming Symphony [Casper Civic Symphony] many many years ago, and worked for the Wyoming Department of Employment in the job placement area. And I said that I was out here looking for work, and he said, “Well the state of Wyoming has an opening for a contract programmer, and lo and behold, I interviewed for and got that job, and then about a month later, they had a permanent position open and I just took that interview and that was 25 years ago, and, been there ever since. For the next five weeks. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Uh-huh, yeah. Okay great.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: Thanks for that information. Did you have something to add?

Richard: Nope. That’s it.

Rebecca: Okay, what are your earliest memories from your first few years with the symphony?

Richard: Earliest memories were a much more leisurely rehearsal schedule that was, we had a two week cycle which was, I want to say it was Monday-Wednesday-Friday, or maybe it was Wednesday-Friday, and then Monday-Wednesday-Friday the following week with a concert on Sat- dress rehearsal and concert on Saturday, and that put me in a position where I could, had a much less nerve-wracking experience to get a sense of what the conductor tempos were gonna be, and who I was playing with at what time, and then, so on and so forth. It was probably a bit of a synthetic experience. I had freelanced in Houston, back in the early eighties, and, we had kind of a standard (clears throat) standard job package was, called it three and two, which was three rehearsals two performances, and they were generally packed in together and you’d probably do that in the span of a few days, then you’d have two rehearsals one day or something. But that was many years before I came out here. I was doing that regularly, and so it kind of gave me a chance to reintegrate with regular orchestral playing. I had played in orchestras in Virginia and I had lived in New York for a while before that, and I had-was-was still playing, but the rigors of pulling together concerts pretty regularly was a challenge, and so that rehearsal schedule really helped. We did some interesting literature back in those days. We played up in Beartrap [Bear Trap Meadow County Park on Casper Mountain] for instance, and that was usually an all-America thing with a lot of Copland [Aaron Copland, 20th century American composer and conductor] and stuff like that. I had been fortunate enough to be asked to play on one of the local musician recitals that they did one concert per season, was featuring local artists, and so we’d do a concerto or something, [A concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment] and I ended up playing Mozart’s Concerto for that, and that was a tremendously wonderful experience, so. There were some good times back then. I remember a wonderful principal cellist.

Rebecca: (chuckles) Thanks.

Richard: (chuckles)

Rebecca: So, let’s just back up. Can you clarify a little bit your reference to Beartrap?

Richard: Beartrap is a summer festival held here in Casper, usually in beginning of August, if I got it right. It’s a- kind of a big deal, evidently, in the bluegrass circles, and so most of the music that they have this bluegrass sort of, the symphony would play, pretty much every year for several years, for that festival. They’d set up a big tent and then we would play symphonic literature for about an hour, and the audience would, you know, listen to their bluegrass. Turn around, listen to the orchestra. Turn back around and listen to the bluegrass, so. (laughs heartily) That’s Beartrap. [Bluegrass music is a genre of American music that developed in the Appalachian region of the United States]

Rebecca: Right. The top of Casper Mountain in Beartrap Meadow.

Richard: I’m sorry?

Rebecca: On top of Casper Mountain is-

Richard: Yes.

Rebecca:-Beartrap Meadow-

Richard: Yeah, Beartrap Meadow is

Rebecca: Yeah.

Richard: County park I guess it is.

Rebecca: Right, it’s a public place. Okay, great. So do you have any details about your performance of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with us in the 90s?

Richard: I believe that was the 1999 season. Want to say it was in the-uh, no-it might’ve been in the ‘98-’99 season. It was in the spring. Actually, myself and the then principal clarinet, (clears throat) James Romain, R-O-M-A-I-N, was, he played the Glazunov saxophone concerto, and then I did the Mozart, and I had never played, or have never played, before or since, a concerto with an orchestra, so that was a nice experience. [Alexander Glazunov, 19th and 20th century Russian composer]

Rebecca: Okay, so then let’s move to the time when there was no longer a resident conductor with the orchestra, but switched to having, I believe it was Jonathan Shames, coming in?

Richard: Jonathan Shames was the first non-resident conductor, maybe in the first place, first conductor in the orchestra’s history. I would not swear to that, but I would be very surprised if that’s not a true statement.

Rebecca: Oh, it is true.

Richard: And he was, at that time, coming in from Michigan. I think he was here for three seasons? And had taken a job in Oklahoma, at the very end of it, and his responsibilities in Oklahoma precluded him to staying on as the music director here. Some of the things that we had done with him, I remember we did a Beethoven Ninth Symphony with him, and played that. We did a runout where we’d go and play at a-travel, play, come back. Played that in Lander when they opened the new high school in Lander, and, so we played the Beethoven Ninth here, and then hauled everybody up to Lander, and played Beethoven Ninth there.

Rebecca: (inaudible speech)

Richard: I believe Holly Turner was still the director at that time the,

Rebecca: Executive director.

Richard: Executive Director, at that time, and she had arranged quite a bit. We had moved-that was a very interesting time in that we, it was a period where I think that a lot of the classic rock bands were starting to-to redo some of their tunes with orchestra backing, and so we had the Moody Blues; [they] had been doing that quite a bit around the country. And, in fact it was kind of odd. I played a concert in Roanoke [Virginia], with the Roanoke Symphony, for the Moody Blues and then, shortly after coming here, played in Casper with the Moody Blues. (chuckles) And then we had also Three Dog Night and Kansas. I remember it was the three main groups we had played with. And so we were kind of drifting-not drifting-we had a very strong pops influence, and that was with Jonathan, that was around the time that we stopped going up to Beartrap, and I’m not sure if the funding had run out for that, or exactly what the details were, but he was not really keen on the pops angle. And so we did, I mean, we did quite a bit of very interesting classical works, but the pops end of it kind of stopped at that point. When he left we had a, ah! When he left we had a- the orchestra was struggling financially, and so, when he- sorry, when he came here we had done a season with the, music director search, where we brought in five or six candidates from around the country. Each one of them conducted a concert. They spent time in the community, meeting the patrons and things like that. By the time he left, the finances, the orchestra, were strained, and so we did not do the music director search, but used one of the conductors who was, who the then executive director was Sherry Parmater, had worked with in Montana, met Matthew Savery, was available to come down and he he guest-conducted one concert. It worked out okay, and so they brought him in-they hired him at that point, kind of without having done the music director search because they kind of simply couldn’t afford it.

Rebecca: Right.

Richard: And so, he was here for, 10 seasons I believe. Nine or 10. That would’ve been roughly 2005 to roughly, [20]15, probably a little bit more than 10; 16-17-18-19-12-um, and he brought us back in. He was very in-tune with how to satisfy the crowd, as it were, and so we had a lot of interesting programming. Interesting not as a pejorative thing or anything, but- interesting in that it was really interesting. And things he found that were successful with his orchestra in Bozeman [Montana], then we would reproduce that with reasonable success here. And, I think under his tenure that the orchestra did get back on a much firmer financial footing, they had started some of their fundraisers, such as “Wine on the River,” which is where they have a large outdoor gathering by the river, and auction off wines and other things. And so that helped quite a bit. That was a very successful fundraiser. Then he did not renew his contract, after the last season he was here. Chose not to renew his contract, and we did another conductor search at that point, and selected Christopher Dragon, who is the current music director.

Rebecca: Okay, so you have played under Peacock, Shames, Savery and Dragon?

Richard: Yes.

Rebecca: Let’s go to Dragon. How was he to play under?

Richard: I’m sorry?

Rebecca: Let’s start with Dragon. Let’s go backwards.

Richard: Okay

Rebecca: How was he to play under?

Richard: He was very, very very good. He is, I will, I think I remember what all of the conductors here, what all of their instruments were. Kind of their primary instrument, before they became a conductor, and I believe one of his, at least, was clarinet. So he has a very good sense of woodwind playing. He is a very easy going, I would say. Easy going but exacting. And so we would rehearse things over and over and over, but it, with good results I believe. And so, but even at that we stayed, it’s a very focused time and, in the-in the rehearsals and, his criticism is constructive and always given with a sense of “not to terrorize the musician.” (chuckles)

Rebecca: (laughs)

Richard: I mean, we had a conductor who was, will, you know, throw these little tantrums and things like that, and, which helps nothing, and actually makes you play worse. I believe, in my experience, I’ll just speak from that. There’ll be times where I will miss something and then miss it again, and then miss it again, and I’m just starting to, y’know, know up and get so bound in nerves, and defeat myself. And he’s very very good at coming up, over the [rehearsal] break and saying, “Here’s what I think you’re missing.” “Try this. Try this to work on it.” and “Relax, you’re gonna get it. It’s gonna be fine.” and it comes out okay. I mean, invariably he gives very good suggestions. I-I’ve been very happy under him.

Rebecca: Well, I guess I’ll take your word for it, that this story that you just told is accurate because, you’re such a good bassoon player, it’s hard for me to fathom (chuckles) this.

Richard: Oh well, I-I can-I can screw up. (laughs)

Rebecca: (laughs) Well, anybody can, but, I don’t know. Well anyways. Fine. Great. Yeah, I’ve heard really good things about Christopher Dragon.

Richard: Yes.

Rebecca: Okay, so, if we’re working backwards-

Richard: Matthew?

Rebecca:- It would be back to Matthew Savery, yeah.

Richard: Matthew was a very interesting character, because, personally, I grew from his leadership. I’ll call it that. He was more, you know, as Christopher was very laid back, Matthew was, let’s say intense. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Mhmm.

Richard: And I know a lot of people who would just get so bound up in nerves playing for him, that it was almost like PTSD, y’know. I mean, coming out from underneath it. Some rehearsals could be really unpleasant if things weren’t going right. He again, he was also one, however, who knew what he wanted to bring out. Knew how to ask for it. I believe he eventually got it, and, like I said, I learned quite a bit, not only about playing, but about some of the [indistinguishable] things with music that we deal with, and he, I-I felt like I got along with him very very well.

Rebecca: That’s good. I’m just gonna jump back to Dragon for a minute.

Richard. Yep. Mhmm.

Rebecca: A cellist friend of mine who still plays in the orchestra said that one of the things she really likes about Dragon is that he doesn’t waste rehearsal time telling stories.

Richard: No. That was when the first conductor, when I came here. (laughs)

Rebecca: Right.

Richard: Did quite a bit. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Yeah.

Richard: And that was painful. Yeah, I will go ahead and say it. Curtis was very laid back. Curtis was, I played well under him, but, I also, actually was, kind of, section bassoonist in Rapid City (South Dakota), and when they were looking for a new conductor, he was one that applied, and had a concert series, and it kind of triggered the story time that we would get. And, that was, for wind players, it was not only the time spent sitting through a story that was not. You’re having a hard time [unintelligible] it wasn’t what you were there to do, but, they would last so long that you’d almost need another warm-up session. And the instrument would go out of tune and so, the conductors, and in fact the three out of town conductors we’ve had, were all very, effective with rehearsal time. Such that you don’t sit there for, long periods of time and reeds dry out, and your chops [mouth; which woodwind and brass players use to play] get cold, and your instrument goes out of tune. I appreciate that a lot. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Yeah, and I’ll just mention, on the positive side, I infer from everything I’ve heard about Dragon, that he respects the orchestra, and, uh-

Richard: I believe he does.

Rebecca: Yeah. Doesn’t engage in the sort of behavior that would cause the musicians to wish they weren’t playing under them, or something like that.

Richard: Yes. And that's not necessarily the case with his predecessor. So I understand.

Rebecca: Yeah. I. It took me a lot of years to realize, or discover, that conducting, it’s, the people part of it is as important as the musical part of it.

Richard: Which is one of the reasons why I had wished, and I still have this secret wish, that businesses would learn from conductors how to manage. Learn from good conductors, how to manage. That, Christopher could share with a small business that, y’know, as he does, sharing musical things with a business, because when you think about it, the conductor is getting a group of egos to synchronize within very tight tolerances of time. I mean, our fingers are all moving within a few milliseconds of each other, and he’s doing it with a stick. (wheezes) (laughs)

Rebecca: Yeah.

Richard: Not a stick to beat us with. I mean, just a tiny stick [the conductor’s baton], and yet, that technology, and those skills, and that communication that is enough to get a large group of very diverse personalities to function as a single cohesive unit.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s tricky.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: I’m sure you recall from your days, long ago-

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: -a sign on the wall in the rehearsal room that said “the conductor is always-rule number one, the conductor is always right. Rule number two, if the conductor is wrong, refer to rule number one.”

Richard: (chuckles)

Rebecca: So, yeah. We’re kinda stuck with whoever it is and,

Richard: Yeah.

Rebecca: We kind of get lucky when they are-when they are well-behaved.

Richard: Mhmm. Yeah. You, appreciate it if you’ve been through, not having that. (chuckles)

Rebecca: Yeah. It’s hard on the morale to play under someone that does not respect the group.

Richard: Yes. Yes.

Rebecca: Great. Well let’s go on now. You said something that intrigued me as a string player, and perhaps, for the historical record it will be interesting. When I was a music major at University of Wyoming for cello performance, I got, let’s see, I guess you could say lectured a lot by some of the woodwind players.

Richard: Mm.

Rebecca: -because they informed me, which I did not know, it was cool to learn this, that the instrument they played was not inherently in-tune.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: Like either clarinet or bassoon or whatever, and you push down a key, and it’s-it is not even, like the piano keyboard, you know, which isn’t, strictly speaking, in-tune because it’s equal tempered. You can play in any key, but it’s a compromise, as you know.

Richard: Right.

Rebecca: So, I got a real education when I was told, “Well, no, I have to adjust for just about every note I play.”

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: “Just like you on your cello if you don’t hit the note right.”

Richard: Yep.

Rebecca: Could you go into that a little more?

Richard: Oh, actually, I have a great story on that one. It was when I was in college, I kinda had this little, leisurely degree program, and I think that the University of Houston was supported by oil when oil was doing very well. And so I started out as a music major. I started touring with the touring arm of Houston Grand Opera, in my sophomore year, and, so I kinda missed out on a lot of spring music classes, and did that for a few years, and that company folded, so I was gonna go ahead and resume my degree, and I started thinking, “Why am I getting a degree in music?” when you don’t really need a degree to play in an orchestra. And, I’d be better served by getting a different degree, continuing to play, and if something didn’t work out I’d have the other degree to work on. And so I started becoming an engineering student. And, in the course of that, I was playing in my instrument, on the bassoon, the, middle line D [middle line of the musical staff in bass clef; a clef is a sign, a kind of hieroglyphic, that musicians have to learn. It defines a particular line of the five-line musical staff, and it defines the note for that line—such as G—and from there, that is the reference point for locating all the other notes on the staff. Without a clef to define what note a particular line is, those five lines have no meaning at all.], and the D an octave above it, of a virtually identical fingering, but, one of those was flat [low], and one was sharp [high]. (chuckles) And I-that just blew me away that, y’know, I mean the hole is drilled in a certain place in the instrument. How can one pitch be flat and the other be sharp? And so I started rummaging around the library, and, found an article called, “The Mathematical Placement of-of Woodwind Tone-Holes.”

Rebecca: Ooo, cool!

Richard: I-I guess it’s fantastic, and I open it up, and it’s-it’s full of greek. (laughs)

Rebecca: (laughs)

Richard: And so, at the beginning of it, it says, you know, like, and this is my retelling, embellished slightly for theatric effect, but, in the first paragraph it says, “As we know from elementary acoustics…” and I’m sitting there saying, well, you know, I don’t know anything about acoustics, so I think I’m gonna find me a book on acoustics. And so I found a book on acoustics, and opened it up, and in the first paragraph it says, “As we know from elementary physics…”

Rebecca: (laughs)

Richard: And I said, I don’t know anything about physics. I think I’m gonna go see what I can find and go get me a physics book. Well I got me a physics book, opened it up, first paragraph says, “As we know from elementary calculus…” (laughs) okay, this is getting old, but I’m gonna get a calculus book.

Rebecca: (laughs)

Richard: And so I got a calculus book, and I started going through it, and, opened it up, and in the first paragraph, it says, “If you write a small computer program, you can simulate calculus limits.” I said, I don’t know anything about computers and so I found myself a computer book, and fell in love with computers. And that’s how I became a programmer so-

Rebecca: Well that’s fascinating.

Richard: -because two notes were out of tune with each other that, I could not figure out why, and I still to this day have no answer to that ‘cause I couldn’t get past the first paragraph of any of the books that I was reading. But on the bassoon we have a range of, it’s a pretty wide range, because we’re, like the cello, down in that lower end, and so you’ve got more audible harmonics that are practical for us. [Harmonics are defined later in this interview] And, so, we also have a couple of additional challenges though. In that, the–I’m assuming that the reason this is this way on stringed instruments, that, cellos and basses are tuned differently is because you know, the human hand kinda can’t jump that far. In the case of the bassoon, most of the holes are not drilled straight through the instrument. They’re drilled at weird angles. And it’s the placement of those holes, and the length of holes, makes it very unlikely that you’re going to, that just by the manufacturing process, are going to get the hole in the right place for the right [indistinguishable] to make that note come out in-tune. And then also by the acoustics of the instrument, the overtone series did not comport with equal temperament very well, as we all kind of find out. And, so, even if they could drill them perfectly, it still wouldn’t sound right. And so we’re always having to adjust, and that’s one of the reasons why I kind of laugh at my colleagues, who make a big deal out of getting the A, for the tuning note, because it’s like, where we have roughly half of the piano range we can play on the bassoon, and so I would play my A, get it kinda where I know where it was, and say okay, one down, 43 to go. [The standard piano keyboard has 88 keys]

Rebecca: Ahahah!

Richard: ‘cause every pitch is going to be-you just can’t blow it-you’ve got to blow it and then adjust it, and then once you’ve adjusted it, you’ve got to adjust to everybody else around you. Because it doesn’t sound any good-you can be perfectly in-tune, but if everybody else is a few cents sharp, then, you’re gonna be flat.

Rebecca: Right.

RIchard: So. Did that answer that?

Rebecca: No, that’s fine. It generated some more notes and questions, but, let me just jump back to the term(s) flat and sharp.

Richard: Sure.

Rebecca: I’d like you to define flat, and define sharp, both in terms of sound and notation.

Richard: Oh! Well, I suppose, notation, when we would say flat, in terms of the twelve note scale that builds up Western music, a flat would be a twelfth of an octave, which is a note that sounds really similar to the-all the other notes who are an octave apart. (chuckles) This is, you’ve asked a very difficult question here. But that flat is lower, lower than one twelfth of an octave, lower than the note that you are flat from. So we say that we’re playing a C, and we go down a half step, which happens to be in Western music, that happens to be a B, then, that would be a twelfth of an octave lower than the C that you started on. And, similarly, sharps would be a twelfth of an octave higher than [cuts out]

Rebecca: You’re cutting out. Can you say something? I don’t know what’s happened to the audio, but you’re suddenly very faint.

Richard: Oh, let me see. I probably bumped it because I was having a hard time with that. (laughs) (inaudible talking)

(audio buzzes) [pause to resolve technical difficulties]

Rebecca: Okay, so, something occurred to me as you were talking about the bassoon was that, people who don’t know anything about it might be inferring that there are holes in the instrument that you put your fingers over, but that is-

Richard: Yes.

Rebecca: -isn’t true, right?

RIchard: That is true. It’s-woodwinds are, and of which the recorder is one that most people are familiar with, they change pitch by having holes drilled periodically through the length of the instrument. And those holes are, by having those holes placed, you, and lifting up fingers, you effectively make the length of the instrument shorter, which produces a higher sound.

Rebecca: That’s a really great explanation because that’s really what happens on a string instrument when we put down our finger-

Richard: Yes.

Rebecca:-the string is shorter. So the pitch is higher.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: Fascinating. Now I wanna tell you a brief story, I hope it’s not a waste of time, because this is something I really don’t understand about the bassoon. Especially with the involvement of a reed.

Richard: Okay.

Rebecca: The reed being just for the, well, you describe the reed.

Richard: Bassoon and oboe are both double-reed instruments, and double-reed is contrasted with clarinet and saxophone, which are single-reed instruments. And, with the single-reed instrument, the sound is produced by a piece of cane, the reed, vibrating against a fixed surface that’s part of the instrument in the case, in the clarinet and the saxophone, that’s the mouthpiece. And that vibration, as you blow air across it, causes fluctuations in air pressure, which are then resonated by the body of the instrument. Just the fact that the kind of, the length of the tube dictates the frequency at which that flipping, flapping back-and-forth of the reed, those variations of pressure, resonate, and then they transmit through the air to the listener’s eardrum, which, likewise, vibrates, and through the miracle of hearing, we perceive it as sound in our brains. And so that’s, in a nutshell, how clarinets work. Bassoons work in a very similar way, only instead of a reed vibrating against a fixed mouthpiece, the reed actually vibrates, there are two reeds, that vibrate against each other, and that produces the distinctive sound that they make, and also, the distinctively low bank accounts that double-reed players have from having to buy all the stuff to make their reeds. (laughs)

Rebecca: (laughs back) The fact that you have noooo free time because-

[inaudible talking over each other]

Richard: That was my college ritual, was that I had a 12-hour day beyond classes, and it was four hours practicing, four hours listening, and four hours reed-making. And that was my, that was my life.

Rebecca: Okay, the sound got swallowed up on the last thing. Did you say four hours reed-making?

Richard: Reed-yes. Correct. Making, so, the process- after a certain point, the reeds that one goes down and buys at a music store, are really not adequate. They are a sort of one-size-fits-all. You need something that really kind of tapers to your physical characteristics, your concept of sound, and your concept of music in general. And, so, one of the things, and it usually happens in college, that students will do, is make their own reeds, and you will start from a certain, a given point. There are several starting points that you can, you use, that are just purchasing from somebody else who does the work, and then finishing it. And, so, we’ll-like right now, myself in the last four or five years, I’ve started taking from cane that is, just in little tubes of bamboo that you would see in like a bamboo pole. And I take that and shave out the inside of it, shave the bark off of it to rough it out, and then shape it into the characteristic bassoon reed shape. And, then scrape it down a little further to get the refinements and thickness of the-of the blade, and make bassoon sounds. And so we have, I also refer to it as a microphone reed because the tolerances are pretty amazing, and, length of the bassoon blade is about an inch and an eighth, and the depth of the thickest part is about 40 thousandths of an inch, 30-40 thousandths of an inch, and at the thinnest it’s about three thousandths of an inch. So we’re generally, scraping it down with like sandpaper. So, but, it makes for a very tedious time. (laughs)

Rebecca: (laughs) Yeah. Okay I wanna jump to the side a minute and-

Richard: Okay.

Rebecca:- ‘cause I-I thought I understood this at the time that I learned it, what I’m about to describe. I understood it in terms of strings, and vocal cords, and, say, a column of air like you would get in an organ, or something like that.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: I don’t think I understood it in terms of the other instruments of the orchestra, so it was an acoustics course that I took as an undergraduate student. sort of an idiot course for music majors,

Richard: ‘Kay.

Rebecca: -and the teacher would give a demonstration of what happens, so there’s a natural process when you get something vibrating, whether it’s a string, or a vocal cord, or a column of air-

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: -Which, the, the vibrating entity wants to divide itself at certain points,

Richard: Right.

Rebecca: -can be at a very easy point, a halfway point which is the octave.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: [cuts out] the one third point I believe, or, at the one quarter point, which is two octaves higher, and the one third point, which is, I think a fifth up, anyway

Richard: Right.

Rebecca: Getting a little technical, but, he demonstrated this at the at the front of the room and he did not say anything about instruments or anything, but it hit me as a revelation, Oh! This is something I’ve been dealing with ever since I picked up the cello.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: We call it harmonics.

Richard: Right.

Rebecca: You touch the string in a certain place and it doesn’t screech, it sounds, it sounds an octave higher, or it sounds an octave lower, or whatever.

Richard: Hm. Mhmm.

Rebecca: But, how that translates into, say, a bassoon or an oboe, a double-reed instrument, you kind of said it already, but I’d like you to repeat it-

Richard: Sure.

Rebecca: -in terms of the reed and whether you get a column of air vibrating through the instrument, or something like that.

Richard: And so the the column of air in the instrument, is, and I’m gonna start using terms that I ought not use, but, I believe that that’s a, standing wave, sort of a standing wave. That-that length of air that makes the column, will naturally resonate sounds much like a string would. I think that it’s kind of a, maybe a better way to look at it is, rather than if you had, on the cello you could move your fingers up the fingerboard and shorten the string that- [cuts out] if you were [cuts out] a pan cello, which is sort of the cello equivalent of a pan pipe, where you had different- Instead of moving your fingers on the fingerboard, to shorten the strings, we had fixed-length strings that you then bowed to make them vibrate the air so it vibrates the ear of the listener. Each one of those would be successively shorter. And so that’s kind of the same idea that woodwind instruments have. In fact, that may be a good transition, because if you think of the pan pipe, if you can picture what the pan pipe looks like, or a pipe organ, that it’s the set of tubes of different lengths that resonate at different frequencies. And with woodwind instruments, they get that effective length by putting their fingers down. So instead of moving around eight different pipes, you just lift up eight different fingers. To get that-that same effect of playing pitches and [cuts out]

Rebecca: Okay. I’m having trouble visualizing this.

Richard: Okay.

Rebecca: You’ve got the bassoon, or the clarinet or the oboe, or whatever, and the fewer the keys are pressed down the longer the column of air?

Richard: No. No. The holes interrupt the column of the overall length of the instrument. So if you, if I play the lowest note on the bassoon, I would have the entire length of that tube sealed up.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.

Richard: So then, it’s coming out the bottom, in our case, the top, because it bends. (laughs) But it’s-it’s coming out the end of the tube. When I lift up a finger, it effectively shortens that tube a little bit, and gives me, in essence, a shorter tube, which would produce a slightly higher pitch. Much like the pan pipe, where you have different lengths of tubes, we acknowledge that by just picking up fingers on a single tube.

Rebecca: Okay, that’s clear.

Richard: Mm.

Rebecca: Okay. You made a statement a little while ago.

Richard: ‘Kay.

Rebecca: Now the one about the little background about harmonics and overtones. You said, I think you said, according to my notes, the bassoon has audible harmonics that are practical? Did I get that note down right?

Richard: I think what I was referring to is that, with a violin, for instance, and we’ll compare a violin and a cello. When a violin starts getting up into its you know, four or five octaves above the bass harmonic, you have two problems that show up. One is that you’re getting it kind of outside the limits of human hearing, and you’re also getting distance between successive notes and darn close to [cuts out] finger. And so in that effect that not only, if you had extended that indefinitely, not only could you not hear it, you really couldn’t play it very effectively. Whereas on the cello, you know, you have, you could, theoretically, get all the way up there. Right to the same place where the violin is playing, but then the notes would be further enough apart that you could have a fighting chance at playing. (laughs) SO there’s the [cuts out] four or five of the audible notes of the instrument, is extremely difficult to play, on, bass instruments. It’s a bit easier to play ‘cause we’re still to where there’s not, to where you don’t have to shorten the string or the column of air, that much. And so in that respect, it’s practical and it’s also audible. That four octaves above the bottom of the cello, or the bassoon, is, just, scratching the surface of the violin.

Rebecca: Yeah, I-I remember the first time a violinist friends of mine told me that when they were playing very high notes on a higher string, they’d have to move their fingers aside to make room for a neighboring finger to get-

Richard: Yeah.

Rebecca: -so that just blew my mind because think of the maneuvering you’d have to do, especially if it was a fast passage. Just to play, just to nail the notes. I (trails off)

Richard: Yeah, I, it is, it does just blow the mind, y’know?

Rebecca: It made me glad I was a cellist.

Richard: Exactly. (laughs heartily)

Rebecca: Okay, great. This is, quite interesting. So I want to jump back to a term that you’re using that we know the meaning of, but for the non-musician you’d better clarify. You used the term “Western Music.”

Richard: Oh! Okay. As opposed to Country Western Music?

Rebecca: Right.

Richard: Western Music is actually compared to, I guess the natural, economy, and since we tend to refer to things as A or B, or left or right, up or down, that Western Music then has a counterpart in Eastern Music, where the octave, that we have divided into 12 notes that are equally spaced, in some other culture they might not necessarily be, 12 notes. And, or, it may not use the same, they may not use the same, the notes in the same way that we do. Of course they kind of have the same notes, but, they use them in ways that sounds very alien to us. And so, Western Music has its counterpart in Western culture, which is, typically that was derived from, knowledge derived from what the Greeks had and what was here. Knowledge derived from what the Greeks [cuts out] and what we see with the Middle Easterns. (laughs)

Rebecca: Yeah. So, so, pretty much Europe, and then you get into I guess that’d be called the Orient that they called it.

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca: Except for exceptions like Russia. I know, Tchaikovsky and Borodin and some of the other Russian composers, they really sound like European composers. [Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer; Alexander Borodin, 19th century Russian composer]

Richard: Well, and, and you can trace some of the reason for that back to, in fact, those two composers that you mentioned are very interesting counter-examples. Because, Borodin was one of the- was one of the composers, along with Modest Mussorgsky, Glazunov, and somebody else I can’t think of, from around Europe, the “Russian Five,” if you were seeking to stray away from the Western musical tradition that was native Russians, it conflicted with Tchaikovsky because he was definitely of the European mindset. [Modest Mussorgsky, 19th century Russian composer] That Tchaikovsky really did not use that much Russian, didn’t really cite Russian musical sources. He didn’t that much, and his symphonies are pretty much what you’d expect from Brahms at the time. So that thing with Russia being kind of a weird outlier, is actually a great observation because it’s a weird outlier. (chuckles) [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer]

Rebecca: Well, having produced, Shostakovich as well, I’ve always found his music to be, a very interesting mixture of really evocative, foreign-foreign to me, as a Western music aficionado, definitely sounds like, you know, cold, shivery winters and- [Dmitri Shostakovich, 20th century Soviet-era Russian composer]

Richard: Mhmm.

Rebecca:-and, you know, all sorts of other stuff that we don’t-we don’t really understand, even in the coldest parts of this continent,-

Richard: Right.

Rebecca: -except maybe,

Richard: Yeah.

Rebecca: Alaska. Okay. Well, we’ve kind-sort of digressed here. Um.

Richard: Always fun.

Rebecca: Yeah. Let’s see. So, your affiliation with the symphony.

Richard: Ah!

Rebecca: Let’s see, let’s go back to ... so, I have kind of a personal interest in choral pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth and the Brahms Requiem, and the Verdi Requiem. [A Requiem is the Latin text of the Catholic Mass for the Dead; in the case of Brahms and Verdi, set to music. Giuseppe Verdi, 19th century Italian composer]

Richard: Me too. (laughs)

Rebecca: The symphony is like “you must have-

Richard: I’m sorry, I may have lost you there.

Rebecca: Have you played all of those pieces during your time in the symphony?

Richard: Ah! Very good question! We did the Verdi Requiem here once, in the last 25 years. We’ve done the Beethoven Ninth, I want to say, three times so far, and my fourth time in October again. ... Now, at Christmastime, we will typically do joint performances with a civic chorale and, now lately, the second chorale ensemble in town that I, the Choral Arts Ensemble, which is just a small, more selective choir. And, we will have worked with them, usually [cuts out] them has been more the tradition to play things with them at Christmas, although the one classical Christmas thing you would expect, I believe we may have done all of once, which is the Messiah. The Christmas portion of Messiah. [By George Friedrich Handel, late 17th and early 18th century German-British composer. The Messiah has choral and orchestral movements interspersed with interludes where a vocal soloist sings a short “recitative,” resembling an improvisation, and accompanied by cello and harpsichord.]

Rebecca: Okay, and I feel like Beethoven’s Ninth, jumping back to that, is one of the most difficult orchestral works in existence. Especially for the, well, parts of it for the low strings.

Richard: Uh-huh. I could agree with that case.

Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, it’s-it’s on all the audition lists or used to [be]-

Richard: Uh-huh.

Rebecca: -taking auditions, long ago. But, if you can tell me your opinion of how the rehearsals have gone when the orchestra has tackled Beethoven’s Ninth?

Richard: They have always been, they’ve always been, I-I personally feel like they have always been cordial. Especially the first bassoon. (laughs)

Rebecca: (laughs back)

Richard: No. Especially the no, the Civic Chorale is, probably, play, I’m gonna say they sing beyond the normal range, it’s-it’s, that is a group, who, for being one that-that is open to everybody, pretty much, not sure if there’s a way they’d never be accepted by the Civic Chorale. That they want you to be able to come in and see what they do, and they have always been in an excellent mood when we’ve worked with them. And, I-I think that’s a testament to some of them like Dwight McIntyre, and I’m not sure who’s doing it now, but he had a very strong vocal tradition and talent here. That is, very exciting, I mean, and it’s continuing now even though it’s stopped performing. It’s something that’s based on a peer and he’s a very wonderful singer. It’s-it’s a nice place to do Beethoven’s [Ninth] Symphony.

Rebecca: Great. Let's see. Probably I should back up, I’m there’s terminology that non-musicians won’t understand.

Richard: What?

Rebecca: Giuseppe Verdi, who was a private composer I believe. He composed this Mass for the Dead, setting for the Catholic Mass for the Dead. Setting to music, for some patron’s funeral, I remember that.

Richard: Toni. Mantoni. It was the person that it was written for, and this did this part where they played for Verdi, and Verdi died.

Rebecca: Oh!

Richard: And then, now when Verdi died it was a big deal. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Toscanini, mostly known for his work in America, that he actually conducted that performance when Verdi died. [Arturo Toscanini, 19th and 20th century Italian conductor, who became famous in the U.S. via his weekly broadcast concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra]

Rebecca: Goodness.

Richard: So. Yeah that, it requires a very, very, very long story and, and the choir [it] was a very, dramatic piece.

Rebecca: I agree. It seems to have a lot of appeal for musicians. I hope it does for you.

Richard: Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca: Okay, well let’s see. Is there, are there other things you want to tell me about your time with the Wyoming Symphony?

Richard: Just a general summary, and, that, I mean, most of my playing life, has been, right now exactly, half of my bassoon playing life has been in Casper.

Rebecca: Oh.

Richard: And, half of that would’ve been-all of that would’ve been, half of my bassoon playing life has been in the Wyoming Symphony. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have dreamed of, 25 years ago, I think that’s due to excellent colleagues, and very good leadership, and wonderful audiences and always kind of feel urged to play beyond my best when I sit in front of the audiences here, because I feel like they deserve that.

Rebecca: Well that’s very good to hear. Okay, well, we do appreciate your giving us your time today. It’s been very, interesting. All this detail about bassoon playing, and, things like that.

Richard: Thank you.

Rebecca: It’s going to be a real addition to this project.

Richard: Well, if you have any other questions, do feel free to call and ask. I’d agree to do this again and again and again and again.

Rebecca: (laughs) Okay. I guess that’s it. Take care.

Richard: Okay. You too.

Rebecca: Bye.

Richard: Bye-bye.