A Bassoon Circus
“The work, fanciful and accessible, is very well written, filled with comic effects, and everyone has fun, including musicians.”
– La Presse+, Caroline Rodgers
“An amusing work by Maxime Goulet, created by Michel Bettez and the Laval Symphony Orchestra, in which the soloist must not take himself too seriously…”
– Ludwig van Montréal, Frédéric Cardin
A Bassoon Circus is a concerto for solo bassoon and orchestra staged as a instrumental theatre. Each of its seven short movements evokes a different kind of circus act, starring the soloist. The work is a tribute to the comic dimension of Spike Jones’s universe.
I – The Ringmaster
II – The Lion Tamer
III – The Tightrope Walker
IV – The Magician
V – The Human Cannonball
VI – The Clown
VII – The Strongman
Instrumentation: solo bassoon / 2.2.2.1 / 2.2.0.0 / timp+1 / strings
Duration: 16 minutes
Commissioned by the Laval Symphony Orchestra, their artistic director Alain Trudel and the bassoonist Michel Bettez.
Dedicated to Alain Trudel and Michel Bettez.
Premiere: March 15th, 2017, by theLaval Symphony Orchestra and the conductor Alain Trudel and the bassoonist Michel Bettez, at the Salle André Mathieu, in Laval, QC, Canada.
Interview with Maxime Goulet about A Basson Circus
2020, June 27 [postponed] | International Double Reed Society and Michel Bettez | Voxam Hall, University of Iowa, Iowa, IA, United States
2020, Jan. 5 | Royal choir and orchestra of Zanglust Tielt, Milan Lefranc | Centre Culturel Gildhof, Tielt, Belgium
2020, Jan. 4 | Royal choir and orchestra of Zanglust Tielt, Milan Lefranc | Centre Culturel Gildhof, Tielt, Belgium
2017, March 15 | Laval Symphony Orchestra, Alain Trudel and Michel Bettez | Salle André Mathieu, Laval, QC, Canada (premiere)