The contrabass flute is one of the rarer members of the flute family. It is used mostly in flute ensembles. Its range is similar to that of the regular concert flute, except that it is pitched two octaves lower; the lowest performable note is two octaves below middle C (the lowest C on the cello). Many contrabass flutes in C are also equipped with a low B, (in the same manner as many modern standard sized flutes are.) Contrabass flutes are only available from select flute makers.

Sometimes referred to as the "gentle giant" of the flute family, the contrabass retains the facility for trills and flautando, as found elsewhere in the flute world. Ease of arpeggiation is moderate and thus equivalent to the rest of the flute family. The upper registers (middle C and above) lack the strength of tone found in its cousins; the strongest register is arguably that between G1 and G2. Though the upper register can lack strength, its sensitivity and lyricism can be used to great effect; and a good instrument can readily reach the high A or B (above middle C). The 'haunting' low register (below G1) has similar qualities to the bassoon, and the low B (three octaves below middle C) can carry well with an experienced performer.

The contrabass flute requires much greater force of breath to produce sound than most other wind instruments, and composers who write for this instrument might consider more frequent breaks in phrasing than one would when writing for smaller flutes. The contribution that the addition of the contrabass flute has made to the composition of flute choirs is enormous, offering at last the grounding of a true and deep bass sound. A wider, slower air stream is needed to produce a solid tone.

Contemporary musicians using the contrabass flute include Madeleine Bischof, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Matthias Ziegler, Stefan Keller, Ned McGowan, Peter Sheridan and Vinny Golia who also plays all the other sizes of flute, and has recorded with it on the CD ''Music for Like Instruments: The Flutes'', in a quartet with three other flutists.

The contrabass flute in C produced by the Japanese firm of Kotato & Fukushima sells for US$20,000, and that made by Eva Kingma sells for US$16,000. Christian Jäger from Munich has also designed and constructed a contrabass flute. Jupiter flutes has created a student model for flute ensembles.

Contrabass flutes have also been made from PVC pipe, by the Dutch flute maker Jelle Hogenhuis. It is reported that while it might be thought that an instrument made from PVC would be inferior, the PVC allows for a louder instrument if the wall thickness is kept small. PVC also permits more rough treatment, as the plastic instrument can be bumped without denting. Site

New solo and chamber music is being composed almost everyday for this instrument, and performer Peter Sheridan has commissioned numerous works from composers around the world, including: Alex Shapiro, Patrick Neher, Vinny Golia, Bruce Lawrence, Adrienne Albert, and Sheridon Stokes. As a virtuoso solo instrument, even a few concertos have been composed for the contrabass flute. In April 2008 the well structured concerto "Bantammer's Swing" for contrabass flute and chamber orchestra by Ned McGowan was premiered in Carnegie Hall. In 2010, the 'Lyric Concerto' for contrabass flute and strings was commissioned by Mr. Sheridan from the late Australian composer Bruce Lawrence. 'Nola' by composer Benjamin Yusapov, was commissioned by the International soloist Matthias Ziegler, for multiple Low Flutes and orchestra. Numerous composers have written for the Contrabass flute, including Wil Offermans, Robert Dick, Thomas Seelig, Andrew Downes, and Gunter Steinke, to name only a few.

==Variations== Additionally instrument maker Eva Kingma produces two other flutes pitched below the bass flute. One is a "contrabass flute in G," pitched a fourth below the bass flute and an octave lower than the alto flute; thus, this is technically, a contra-alto flute. The other instrument is a "sub contrabass flute in G" pitched one octave below the contra alto flute, or two octaves below the alto flute in G. Kotato & Fukushima also produce a "sub contrabass flute in C", a large, deep instrument pitched a full octave below the contrabass flute in C.

External links

Contrabass flute by Jelle Hogenhuis

Lowflutes.com Peter Sheridan

Eva Kingma Contrabass Flute

Contrabass flute page on Contrabass.com

Photo of Maria Ramey playing Kotato contrabass

Category:Side-blown flutes Category:Contrabass instruments Category:Bass (sound)

it:Flauto contrabbasso nl:Contrabasfluit

Stefan Keller is a classical and jazz flute player and composer from Switzerland. He plays all kind of flutes like Quartertone, Glissando, Bebe, alto flute, and bass flute. Most unusual is his contrabass flute made by Kotato and Fukushima. All these instruments are also electronic flutes. One of his specialities is live looping. His actual solo performance called "Albido" works with the electronic flutes and different loop gear like Repeater and Gibson Echoplex.

External links

Stefan Keller official site

Category:Swiss composers Category:Swiss jazz flautists Category:Swiss classical flautists Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people

de:Stefan Keller

name	Ned McGowan
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
born	1970
instrument	Flute, Contrabass Flute
genre	Contemporary classical music
occupation	Composer
label	Karnatic Lab Records
website	Homepage of Ned McGowan }}

Ned McGowan (1970) is an American composer and flutist based in Amsterdam.

“McGowan’s music strives for an idiom in which various musics – American popular, European classical and avant-garde, Carnatic, a fascination with proportionally intricate rhythms, the use of microtones in the search for new subtleties of melody – and many others, rub against each other and generate new meanings.” - musicologist Bob Gilmore.

Education

After finishing studies in flute at the San Francisco Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, he moved to Amsterdam in 1994 to continue his research. Over the course of eight years, he studied both flute and composition in Amsterdam and The Hague, exploring a wide range of subjects – from extended techniques to Carnatic forms and rhythms, from jazz improvisation to West-African drumming. His compositional voice was profoundly influenced by these experiences, even though he never directly follows any of these traditions stylistically.

In addition to having given masterclasses and workshops on composition, flute and non-western techniques, Ned has worked as coordinator of the Crossing Borders seminar at the Amsterdam School of the Arts and taught Advanced Rhythm at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Composing

McGowan’s piece Tools, winner of the Henriette Bosmans Prize from the Dutch Composer’s Union GeNeCo, was described as “brutal and humorous” (GeNeCo, 2004), while at the same time “packed with discreet acoustic rooms, some more resonant than others, but all proving that... subtlety pays off” (Guy Livingston, Paris Transatlantic, 2006).

His compositions have been played throughout Europe, North America and Australia, at MATA Festival (New York), Ought-One (Vermont), Aspen Music Festival (Colorado), The American Music Week in Bulgaria, the Gaudeamus Music Week, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Klap op de Vuurpijl, and the Grachten Festival (Amsterdam). Ensembles and festivals who have commissioned McGowan include the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Zephyr String Quartet, Calefax reed quintet, the Axyz Ensemble, Duo Vertigo, the Netherlands Flute Orchestra and Hexnut.

He is also highly active in fostering the Amsterdam musical community through the Karnatic Lab Foundation, an organization he founded with Gijs Levelt in 1999 to promote both composed and improvised new music. This umbrella organization runs a monthly concert series, programs a yearly festival with international guests, and has its own record label Karnatic Lab Records and house ensembles: Axyz, a contemporary music ensemble, Spinifex Orchestra, a nine piece jazz ensemble, and McGowan’s own quintet, Hexnut.

Flute Playing

As a flute player, Ned McGowan plays a variety of styles with ensembles such as Hexnut, and Messing with PVC. In 2007, his specific fascination with Carnatic music led to an extended stay in India studying performance, rhythm and composition. In the last five years Ned McGowan has taken an interest in the contrabass flute, as it opens up the bass musical role in addition to the more common melodic role of the flute. His April 2008 Carnegie Hall debut, as soloist in his own contrabass flute concerto "Bantammer Swing" with the American Composers Orchestra, was well received as one of the only pieces in this genre.

Selected Compositions

Heads or Tails (2008) - Jazz band Bantammer Swing (2008) - Concerto for contrabass flute and chamber orchestra Hymn (2008) - Improvising string quartet Fantasy on an improvisation of Ravi Shankar (2007) - Wind ensemble Spectra (2007) - Solo contrabass flute/flute and flute orchestra Tempest in a Teapot (2006) - Orchestra Devil’s Dust (2006) - String Quartet Alap (2005) - Soprano and ensemble Wood Burn (A)(2005) - Reed quintet/Wood Burn (B) (2005) - Chamber ensemble Workshop (2004) - Alto Recorder and tape Tools (2003) - Mixed quartet; Winner Henriette Bosmans Prize, 2003, Netherlands Urban Turban (2001)- Two marimbas; also arranged for: mixed trio/quartet; saxophone and marimba; jazz ensemble. Stone Soup (2001) - Jazz ensemble Moonrise (1998) - Flute; Finalist Gaudeamus Foundation Prize, 1999 Melting Igloos (1998) - Mixed quartet; Finalist Gaudeamus Foundation Prize, 2000 Man in Tights (2009) - Ned's new composition for anglo concertina quintet, inspired by Recorder maker and concertina aficionado Adrian Brown

Discography

Hexnut (2007) Tools (2006) Nandi Dasaru (2005) Non Sequitur (2005) Paximadi (2005) Rickshaw Chase (2001)

External links

Homepage of Ned McGowan

Karnatic Lab

Karnatic Lab Records

Category:1970 births Category:Dutch composers Category:American composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:People from Amsterdam Category:Living people

de:Ned McGowan

Robert Dick (January 1811-December 24, 1866), Scottish geologist and botanist was born at Tullibody, in Clackmannanshire.

His father was an officer of excise. At the age of thirteen, after receiving a good elementary education at the parish school, Dick was apprenticed to a baker, and served for three years. In these early days he became interested in wildflowers--he made a collection of plants and gradually acquired some knowledge of their names from an old encyclopaedia.

When his time was out he left Tullibody and gained employment as a journeyman baker at Leith, Glasgow and Greenock. Meanwhile his father, who in 1826 had been removed to Thurso, as supervisor of excise, advised his son to set up a baker's shop in that town. Dick went there in 1830, started in business as a baker, and worked laboriously until his death.

Throughout this period he zealously devoted himself to studying and collecting the plants, mollusca and insects of a wide area of Caithness, and his attention was directed soon after he settled in Thurso to the rocks and fossils. In 1835 he first found remains of fossil fishes; but it was not till some years later that his interest became greatly stirred.

Then he obtained a copy of Hugh Miller's ''Old Red Sandstone'' (published in 1841), and he began systematically to collect with hammer and chisel the fossils from the Caithness flags. In 1845 he found remains of Holoptychius and forwarded specimens to Miller, and he continued to send the best of his fossil fishes to that geologist, and to others after the death of Miller. In this way he largely contributed to the progress of geological knowledge, although he himself published nothing and was ever averse from publicity.

His herbarium, which consisted of about 200 folios of mosses, ferns and flowering plants "almost unique in its completeness," is now stored, with many of his fossils, in the museum at Thurso. Dick had a hard struggle for existence, especially through competition during his late years, when he was reduced almost to beggary: but of this few, if any, of his friends were aware until it was too late. A monument erected in the new cemetery at Thurso testifies to the respect which his life-work created, when the merits of this enthusiastic naturalist came to be appreciated. See ''Robert Dick, Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist'', by Samuel Smiles (1878).

References

Category:1811 births Category:1866 deaths Category:People from Clackmannanshire Category:Scottish geologists Category:Scottish botanists Category:Bakers Category:19th-century Scottish people