Pizzi: Ode to a Toad

Pizzi: Ode to a Toad

http://www.raypizzi.com/index.html

Pizzi, Ray (b. 1943).

Male

Ode to a Toad. Van Nuys, CA: Ray Pizzi.

2 minutes

This seminal work was composed in 1980, introducing the bassoon as a viable jazz instrument to a wide audience. It was revised in 2002 and has become something of a cult favorite of both performers and audiences. It employs a standard blues scale in a jazz-funk idiom, and, as the title suggests, contains numerous, and often challenging, wide leaps between an upper register melody and an accompanying bass line. The full range is used up to D5, as is a single tremolo. This might be the bassoon’s quintessential encore piece.

Discovery DS 853 (LP)      Ray Pizzi

1980, 2002