Our Traveling Retirees: A bassoonist loose in Brazil By Gordon Solie / Professor Emeritus of Music It’s always a wonderful feeling to be able to mix business with pleasure, especially when your business is also a great pleasure. On a recent trip to Brazil with our chapter of Friendship Force International, I was able to make some wonderful new friends, see some beautiful country, and add some 35 works to my little publishing house, EditionsVIENTO. Of the 25 composers represented in my catalog, five live in Brazil. My hostess during our first week in Belo Horizonte organized a master class for me with the bassoon students at the federal university. Somehow I managed to survive doing this in Portuguese. The bassoon instructor must be a fine teacher as all students played very well. He also showed me a collection of some 40 works for bassoon that he has collected from composers only in the state of Minas Gerais. Can you imagine 40 works for bassoon written by Oregon composers? My hostess also arranged for me to meet the bassoonists of the Belo Horizonte Symphony Orchestra. As their contrabassoonist was in Canada at the time, it was up to me to fill in for him—and on an instrument far different from mine. We read many arrangements that the first bassoonist had made for four bassoons and contrabassoon. What fun! Our second week of home stays was after a long but beautiful bus ride to Piracicaba. My Belo Horizonte hostess had also arranged for me to meet and tour the Piracicaba School of Music. This school and its director, Ernst Mahle, are very famous throughout the country. We ended the day listening to an evening rehearsal of a children’s orchestra. They played with typical Brazilian enthusiasm, especially when rehearsing some of the 1,400 folk songs that Mahle had arranged for them from folk songs throughout the world. Each song was greeted with eager chatter. I was on my own for my third week. Three of the Brazilian composers I work with live in São Paulo, so I spent three days visiting them. One delightful day was spent with one of Brazil’s leading composers, Osvaldo Lacerda, and his wife. She tours Brazil performing piano compositions of Brazilian composers and seemed pleased that I knew many of the pieces she played for me. Before I left, Osvaldo handed me a large stack of his bassoon music he wanted me to publish, as he seemed very pleased with the work I had done on a woodwind quintet of his. All these compositions are now completed and in my catalog. I then flew to Brasilia because I wanted to interview and write an article on Hary Schweizer, the only bassoon maker in all Latin America. I was very fortunate that I could stay with yet another Friendship Force member. We spent a delightful afternoon with Schweizer, complete with the traditional churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) and drank a few caipirinhas (Brazil’s national drink) made from his own homemade cachaça (Brazilian fire water!). That article still is in my computer—uncompleted. In Brasilia I spent an afternoon with the owner of Latin America’s largest sheet music store. He told me that I had more Brazilian music in my catalog than he had in his entire store and that he wanted to purchase most of it. To date I have not heard from him, but Brazilians go at a much more leisurely pace than we, so hope springs eternal. My hostess and I spent another wonderful afternoon with other Friendship Force members who were here in Portland two years ago. Yes, more caipirinhas and another churrasco. The last day in Brasilia was spent with friends and another churrasco and many caipirenhas. Then it was off to the airport and back to São Paulo. Every moment of every day of those three weeks was a special moment. Brazilians are wonderful people and Brazil is such a fascinating country. These are two good reasons that I keep returning to that country. This was my fifth time, but the first to try getting along in Portuguese. Many more packages of music have arrived on my doorstep and more is expected at any time. What a way to mix business with pleasure! Hary Schweizer
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