The bassoon encore

In case you've been scratching your head for two weeks, I just found out that Bill Winstead performed an encore after his Saturday night (Sept. 23) performance with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and here's what it was: The encore was his own improvised version of "My Old Kentucky Home," because, says Bill, CSO principal bassoonist, "Kentucky is my home state."

Actually, the encore was completely unplanned. Paavo pushed him out to do the encore because the crowd wouldn't stop clapping. "I said, what encore?" he says, totally taken off guard. He says he started it like a Bach cello suite (thus fooling his fellow bassoonists) but it soon became obvious that it was the Kentucky gem because "all the Kentuckians in the audience had weepy eyes."

Here's the review from Friday.