A small specialist team
Ludlow Bassoons is a small specialist team brought together by one unusually complicated instrument.
Among us are bassoonists, repairers, engineers and craftspeople. Several of us cross more than one of those boundaries.
That matters, because a bassoon cannot be understood from only one point of view.
It is a piece of precision engineering, but it is also something a musician has to trust instinctively. It can be measured, but ultimately it has to be played.
Our work brings those perspectives together.
Complementary experience
Oliver Ludlow founded the business in 2011 and has spent fifteen years playing, comparing and evaluating the bassoons that have passed through it. His particular focus is the relationship between the instrument and what the player hears and feels.
Jason Soullier brings a strong scientific and technical perspective to repair, restoration, engineering and workshop problem-solving.
Tristan Lambert combines workshop experience with expertise in modern and particularly historical bassoon performance.
Victoria Crowell joined us after a professional orchestral career, bringing first-hand understanding of what an instrument needs to do when a player is relying upon it in rehearsal and performance.
Alison, Martin and Jacob Ludlow provide support around the core team. The company is further supported by a wider circle of professional players, engineers, researchers, makers, craftspeople and advisers.
We do not pretend that one person can be expert in everything.
The bassoon is too complex for that.
Better results come from combining different forms of expertise.
Player and workshop
One of the things that distinguishes our team is the constant interchange between playing and practical work.
A player may identify something that measurement alone cannot explain.
A repairer may discover why an instrument behaves as it does.
Engineering can reveal a better way to solve a mechanical problem.
Playing then tells us whether the solution actually works in music.
That cycle — listen, question, test, refine — runs through everything we do.
More than making
Making Ludlow Bassoons is an important part of our work, but it has not replaced the business from which it grew.
We continue to repair and restore bassoons, supply carefully selected instruments, provide reeds and accessories and support customers over the long term.
Each activity strengthens the others.
And daily contact with bassoonists keeps us close to the people for whom the work ultimately exists.
We think of Ludlow Bassoons as a bassoon workshop in the broadest sense.
Not simply making instruments.
Living inside the world of them.
