One of the reasons I play so many different instruments is that I really enjoy performing in pit orchestras for musical theatre productions. In these ensembles, each individual woodwind musician is frequently called upon to swap between 3 or 4 instruments, and this practice of ‘doubling’ allows orchestrators to maximise the palette of sounds available from a small group of players. If done well, it can help make the band sound many times larger than it actually is.

Woodwind doubling is a fine art in itself (and annoyingly more difficult than playing each instrument in isolation). But the results can be tremendous, and I personally find it fascinating to watch how a reed section can metamorphose over the course of a single piece of music as multiple players juggle an array of instruments. Pit orchestras nowadays tend to be very small, but back in the heyday of Broadway it wasn’t uncommon to have 4 or even 5 woodwind musicians in a show band.

All this brings me onto my latest project, which has finally reached completion after several years on the back-burner. What I’ve done is taken one of the most iconic pieces in musical theatre history – the overture from ‘Gypsy’ – and recorded myself playing all 5 of the reed parts, before putting it all together into a dazzling One-Man Woodwind Section video!

During the piece, the players are expected to between them tackle varying combinations of piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone. This ever-changing ensemble would usually be hidden away from the audience, but now I have brought it right to the forefront, allowing you to marvel at the ingenuity of Broadway orchestrators and musicians, and the magical sound-worlds they can generate from minimal resources.

So here we have it at last – I hope you enjoy my rendition of the woodwind parts from the overture to ‘Gypsy’!