The young bassoon player took honors at this month's Mitchell-Hogg Young Artist...
It’s not unusual for winners at these sorts of events to have taken up their instruments fresh out of toddlerhood. Not Davidson, for whom the idea of playing music first took root in fifth grade. His parents, both musically inclined themselves, suggested he give it a try. But instead of starting on flute or saxophone before switching, as many young players do, he liked the way bassoon sounded and started on the elongated woodwind straightaway.
Even so, Davidson admits it took him a couple of years to start taking music seriously. The summer before seventh grade, his dad started making him practice scales and set him up with a private teacher. Also looming was the prospect of auditioning for Mid-State, a “mysterious and elite” ensemble that drew the top student musicians from all over middle Tennessee.
Around this time, he also began studying with Julia Harguindey, principal bassoonist of the Nashville Symphony, through the orchestra’s diversity-minded Accelerando program, which provided free lessons and picked up the tab to send Davidson on the summer-festival circuit. He chose the Shepherd School over Eastman School of Music, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin and Indiana University.
“It can be downright jovial, with 'Sorcerer’s Apprentice,'” he says. “It can be very depressing, like with Tchaikovsky 6 or Shostakovich 9. It can be very sarcastic as well.” Shostakovich’s symphonies in particular “always have great bassoon solos that seem to have to some extent a level of sarcasm,” Davidson adds.
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