Oliver Ludlow
For our founder, Oliver Ludlow, the story begins with playing.
He started the bassoon at the age of ten and became fascinated early on not only by the music it could make, but by the instrument itself.
Why could one bassoon feel completely different from another?
Why did some instruments seem naturally responsive while others made the player work for everything?
What made an instrument feel right?
Those questions stayed with him.
More than an object
For Oliver, the relationship with his own bassoon also became deeply personal.
As he puts it:
“From quite early on, my bassoon felt like more than an object. In some sense it felt part of me — or perhaps like my shadow. It became part of my identity.”
What surprised him was discovering how many other bassoonists felt something similar.
That became one of the ideas behind the business: to spend his working life among people who shared the same fascination with the instrument.
While studying at university, Oliver spent an increasing amount of his time buying, selling and repairing bassoons.
By the time he graduated, the direction was clear.
He founded Double Reed Ltd. in 2011.
Learning through instruments
Oliver never set out to become a professional orchestral player.
His particular fascination was the relationship between the player and the instrument.
From the beginning, he played the bassoons that passed through the business.
Hundreds of instruments gradually became an education in response, resistance, tuning, projection, tonal character and the extraordinary variety possible within one family of instruments.
He also developed a particular enthusiasm for finding unusual bassoons.
Sometimes they came from famous makers.
Sometimes from names few people knew.
The pleasure was in discovering what made an instrument interesting and then finding the player for whom it was right.
Learning through people
Just as important were the conversations.
Oliver has spent fifteen years talking to bassoonists from around the world about their instruments.
What do they love?
What frustrates them?
What gives them confidence?
What gets in the way?
Helping someone choose a bassoon can be surprisingly emotional.
For some players it is one of the largest and most personal purchases they will ever make.
Oliver understands why.
A bassoon can become far more than a professional tool. It can be a musical partner and part of a player's identity for decades.
That understanding shapes Ludlow Bassoons.
Asking why
Oliver studied philosophy at university.
It may seem an indirect route into instrument making, but the habit of questioning assumptions, weighing evidence and continuing to ask why has proved invaluable.
There was no straightforward modern British bassoon-making apprenticeship for him to follow.
Instead, knowledge had to be gathered from many places: experienced repairers and makers, players, engineers, academics, historical instruments, specialist literature, measurement and experiment.
Oliver's response was not to attempt to become expert in every discipline himself.
It was to build a team of people with complementary expertise.
Why Ludlow?
When the company began making its own bassoons, Oliver chose to put his name on them.
Partly that reflects a long tradition of instrument makers whose businesses carry the founder's name.
More importantly, it represents responsibility.
A Ludlow Bassoon carries Oliver's name, and with that comes accountability for what the instrument represents and for the standards behind it.
But Ludlow Bassoons is not the work of one person.
Every instrument contains the accumulated knowledge of the team and of the many players, repairers, researchers, engineers, craftspeople and advisers from whom we have learnt.
Oliver gave the business its direction.
His fascination remains at its heart.
And the principle that began the journey still guides it:
keep listening, keep questioning, keep learning.
