Notes for the work,
Boogie On Contra Woman by Randy Snyder
(comments by Randy Snyder)
Long an admirer of Karen
Sandene's bassoon playing, I hesitated inflicting a piece on her lest it
jeopardized our collegiality. Then Joe Holmquist came on the scene - another
innocent victim- and I couldn't resist plotting some mischief for the pair.
All that remained was a concept, which came to me last fall while listening
to Stevie Wonder's funk classic, Boogie On Reggae Woman, thinking, "wouldn't
that sound cool on a contrabassoon". Wonder inverts the usual texture
by making the sprightly bass line the dominant part, at least to me. This
was melded to a Steve Reich-Michael Torke-post minimalist - aesthetic (this
is a bit logorrheic but, hey, I'm an academic after all). So the result of
all this nonsense is a mercifully short, but hopefully entertaining sortie
for the audience as well as the performers.