Ruffs Dale bassoonist, 17, earns Friday Evening Music Club's Gardner Scholarship

Until Walter Vinoski was 11, he couldn’t have told you what a bassoon even was.

Now the 17-year-old Yough senior is the Friday Evening Music Club’s 2021 Mildred Gardner Scholarship Competition winner, earning $1,000 through this year’s virtual competition. He is a member of the Westmoreland Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Vinoski, of Ruffs Dale, spoke with the Tribune-Review about discovering his favorite instrument. The following interview has been edited for length.

Q: How did you come to start playing bassoon, and what is it about bassoon that kept you playing?

A: A TV show I used to watch had a bassoonist in one of the episodes and I thought, “Wow, that thing is really weird — I like it!” and always kept it in the back of my mind that it was a neat instrument. My sister was in a ballet company at that time and performed “The Nutcracker Ballet” with the Westmoreland Symphony each year, and every time I went to watch, I always sat in front of the bassoonists to watch them play — not so much to watch my sister perform onstage. At the end of my freshman year in high school, I jokingly asked my parents if we could rent a bassoon for me to learn and, by luck, there ended up being a rentable bassoon at a music shop near us. As I’m approaching my third year playing the instrument, I’m really in awe at how quickly I was able to learn with the instrument. I guess what keeps me playing the instrument is its sound and its quirks. There’s really no other sound that’s close to a bassoon and I really think it’s underappreciated.

Q: What piece(s) did you perform in order to secure the scholarship?

A: I performed Carl Maria von Weber’s “Bassoon Concerto in F Major” and Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Sonata in F minor.” I picked the Weber because it’s a story throughout the piece, and I think it’s impressive if an instrumentalist is able to communicate that story with their audience. I also picked the Telemann because of its technical challenges and how widely interpretable it is with movements only marked such as “sad” or “happy.” Both of the pieces test if the musician can maintain a “tasteful” interpretation even while performing difficult passages.

Q: What is the biggest challenge of playing bassoon compared to the other instruments you’ve played?

A: One of the big challenges that come with playing the bassoon is that the community is relatively small. Most orchestras only have two to three bassoonists in a section which makes competing for a chair incredibly difficult — you always have to be on top of your game. I also had the problem of transitioning to the bassoon after many years of playing other instruments. At the time I started learning the bassoon, I had been playing the piano for eight years and the trumpet for six years. I had no intention of switching to the bassoon solely until I realized how much more potential I had for that instrument compared to the others.

Q: What has it been like spending a school year unable to do the kind of group rehearsals and especially performances to which you’ve become accustomed?

A: Fortunately, because I go to a school with a smaller band than most schools, and we’ve been able to have pretty normal in-person rehearsals as well. We have the band split up so that some people have the class earlier in the day and the rest later in the day. But, really, the only major difference is the inability to have live concerts, and the repertoire we’re learning this year is less intense than years prior.