What one would find here?
The beauty of bassoon playing is one of very well kept secrets in the Estonian community. As I have hade a privilege to be part of Estonian bassooning as one of the few players and teachers altogether more than 30 years, I decided to try to make everything concerning bassoon, bassoon playing, teaching and learning in Estonia more visible with the help of my new homepage.
Good musical instruments have been inaccessible expensive for Estonia during many previous decades, which is why even in professional orchestras often inadequate instruments where used. In music schools, the situation was even worse. If everyone was equally poor, why there are pupils studying for example flute in every music school, but bassoonists are almost nowhere? It’s not possible to check, but my guess is the difference came mainly from (missing) reeds. Whatever had his effect on the spreading knowledge about the bassoon, together with missing instruments and possible pupils, there was even no potential teachers left at the end of the last century. For today we are over the rock bottom, absence of adequate bassoons as well as reeds can be changed if there is enough well-coordinated push from the side of a school principal and bassoon teacher. In the top of bassoon world, there is Estonian born Martin Kuuskmann. Even if most of his knowledge about bassoon playing originates from the US, he never forgets to name with pride his Estonian bassoon teacher Ilmar Aasmets too. Despite the progress, headmasters of music schools need to put significant efforts to get together enough pupils, instruments and teachers for starting with the bassoon class. My respect for all those who continuously work towards this aim – I pursue the same goal with my page here.
Longlasting low in Estonian bassooning has been reduced several times by EV100 joint gift “An Instrument for Every Child” – anyway small numbers are easier to double, but a really lot of music schools got new bassoons and everyone with teaching ambitions got his first few pupils somewhere. Still is bassoon syllabus in only every tenth music school of Estonia and if there is a bassoon teacher in music school, his or her working is limited to about 2-4 pupils. It makes difficult for principals to keep the teacher in a longer period of time. To keep the hope of Estonian language beeing used in bassoon sections of the professional orchestras as the main working language in a longer period of time we need one fulltime bassoon teaching position for every professional bassoon players position. 1:1 ratio is needed, but even after EV 100 joint gift, it is 7:1 for the benefit of the players, which makes me feel worried about.
Why do I think, I’m competent to take responsibility in the subject? Could be, I’m not but who else, if not me? I have formerly been playing in Estonian National SO for 25 years and at the same time about 20 years in Pärnu City Orchestra. I have played with much less regular basis in Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and late contemporary music group NYYD Ensemble. In the school year of 2019/20 I’m teaching in two (Nõmme and Kose) elementary music schools and also in Viljandi music school, where I’m working as bassoon mentor (visiting the school 2 times in a month). I’m also teaching in Tallinn G. Ots Music School. I have worked shortly also as a music school principal. I really believe I can understand the situation from many different viewpoints. I do, however, understand the limitations of my knowledge. One of the goals of the website is to stimulate discussion and hold mutually developing debate between rarely meeting colleagues. Please do comment if you notice something that you think might be stated differently.