There's lots of crazy bassoon stories out there!
Here's one of my favorite.
During the summer of 2018, a bassoonist in Springfield, Ohio named Eric Barga was driving to church after a day of teaching.
Eric was half an hour early for practice at his church. To pass time, he decided to pull out his custom-made Fox 610 red maple bassoon. He sat down on the back of his car and began playing some scales.
Just a few minutes later, Springfield police received a 911 call, warning about a white male sitting on the back of a car holding what looked like a long rifle.
Five minutes later, two police vehicles arrived on the scene.
“They didn’t immediately approach me,” Eric told Springfield News. "I saw a big police van roll up really slowly."
Eric wondered if someone had made a noise complaint about him. But the idea that someone might have mistaken his bassoon for a rifle “never crossed [his] mind”.
“In the right kind of light, it looks like a bazooka,” he said, “but I don’t think it was the right kind of light.”
By the time the officers got to Eric's car, they had realized the gun was actually a musical instrument and were laughing.
They even went on to ask Eric a pretty amazing question: “Is that a bassoon or an oboe?”
Eric treated the officers to a bit of Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto before they left him to his practice.
