On Tuesday, a Winston-Salem retirement community hosted two talented young musicians who grew up 5,000 miles away: Nigerian-born twins Stephen and Nathan Olusemire.
The bassoon and the French horn are two of the most difficult orchestral wind instruments. Horn players have to blow through roughly 15 feet of tightly wound metal tubing, and the bassoon comes with some 30 keys — 13 of them for the thumbs alone!
Stephen Olusemire's first encounter with the bassoon came after hearing a performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and noting how beautiful the instrument sounded. He started off playing euphonium in the church band in his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, and later switched to percussion. But he says something about that first encounter with the bassoon stuck with him.
"This instrument just sounds really beautiful," he says. "And I was like, you know, I made more research about it, and I found out, you know, there's an instrument. It's called the bassoon. And, you know, it was just like new knowledge for me. Years went by, and I moved from the church band to the church orchestra."
So, in his midteens, when the conductor asked him if he’d like to try the bassoon, he jumped at the chance. His twin brother Nathan began music studies on piano. One day, a friend brought a French horn, something he’d never seen before.
"I was just so intrigued," he says. "And then I asked a really funny question at that time, 'Can you let me try your instrument?' I hadn't played any brass instruments in my whole life. And then I was like, 'Oh, can I try the instrument?' And he was like, 'Oh, yeah, for sure.' So, the first ever note I played on the horn was the middle C, and it came out clean. And I was like, 'Oh, maybe this is a sign for me to, like, learn the horn.'"
But to do so, without a strong classical music tradition in Lagos and no school music programs available, he and his brother had to get creative.
"Something that we struggle a lot with is having access to people to teach us," he says. "So most of our learning was based off YouTube videos."
But he says online learning had its limitations.
"Then I went, and I Googled trumpet fingerings, because at that time I saw, oh, the trumpet had three valves," he says. "The horn has three valves, so probably, it's the same thing. I was actually wrong, but yeah, I used trumpet fingerings for like, a few months."
There were other challenges. They wanted to practice constantly, but could only afford to do so once or twice a week when they could find enough money to pay for bus fare and travel to the church where the instruments were kept.
Eventually, Stephen turned to social media for help. He joined a bassoon group chat, posted a short video of himself playing, and introduced himself.
"I told them I was from Nigeria," he says. "I just started playing the bassoon. And you know that I needed help with information of how to play the instrument the right way. And you know, the response I got from that video took everything from here to up there. Because from there I got response from different people from different parts of the world."
After seeing Stephen’s determination and his old, dilapidated instrument, they sent him reeds and equipment. Leading professional orchestral musicians offered him free weekly lessons: bassoonists in the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra in Denmark. They also started a GoFundMe page for a new bassoon.
"It was just like a dream," he says. "And, you know, one day I had a UPS delivery driver in the front of my house delivering an instrument to me."
UNCSA Associate Professor of Bassoon Stephanie Patterson taught Stephen via Zoom for one year before he arrived in Winston-Salem to attend school there on a full scholarship. She says the learning goes both ways.
"It's completely unlike working with any other student in a lot of ways," she says. "You know, he's great in that he has a completely different perspective than most of my students. You know, he didn't grow up with bassoon lessons. He didn't play in a band with other bassoon players. So for me, it's like, I'm learning how to teach in a different way, because he didn't learn how to learn the way my other students did."
Nathan arrived at UNCSA after receiving free online instruction from professional French horn players from across the U.S. And a GoFundMe page led to his new instrument as well.
Professor of Horn Maria Serkin says Nathan’s clear dedication to horn playing and his ability to quickly adapt to feedback caught her attention immediately.
"It's always the most proactive students that go far above and beyond that are the most successful in their careers, and that's something that I have noticed about Nathan and Stephen," she says. "They take advantage of every opportunity to grow as a horn player, as a bassoonist, as an artist, and that goes a long way. It's that drive that I see in them that will take them far."
Two years ago, it took them all the way to Carnegie Hall in New York, where they performed with the Africa United Youth Orchestra. Both Olusemires say they plan on continuing their musical education and pushing forward with their duo. Long-term, they hope to one day return to Nigeria and set up a musical institute of their own, like UNCSA.