Lisa Gerbracht, Bassoon
How do you become a bassoon player? Well not with a bassoon. You start with piano, or flute, clarinet or, heck, even violin. Lisa grew up in Pleasant Hill, just over the hills. “I played piano when I was little, then violin from when I was 10 to 14,” she says. Along with some flute and percussion. “When I was 15, I discovered bassoon. I heard it and loved the sound, but didn’t really know what it looked like.” By then Lisa’s hands were big enough to hold and play it that huge instrument, so she borrowed one from the school. “I knew right away that bassoon was my real instrument. And I was lucky enough to have lessons from a really good teacher from the beginning.”
Lisa played bassoon in her high school orchestra and with the Oakland Youth Orchestra until she went to UC Davis, where she played in the UCD Orchestra and the Sonoma County Philharmonic. And received a degree in physics.
Since then she’s played with wind quartets–giving house concerts and once playing the basement of Li Po bar in Chinatown (“Yelp” says it’s a dive bar!). She also plays with the Contra Costa Wind Symphony. She works remotely in business development for Ohio-based Marathon Special Products, which makes power distribution blocks, terminal blocks and fuse holders that go into control panels. What?? For example, you know those locked metal boxes you see on streets corners (sometimes green, sometimes wildly painted)? They house the electronic control panels, the components for controlling the traffic lights. Now you know what’s in them.
Lisa was happily playing bassoon when we discovered her through a connection in the CC Wind Symphony. “I’m now really enjoying the Prometheus programming; it’s such a nice combination of the new and modern, with the best of the classical repertoire.” And we’re really enjoying her playing with us!
