Welcome to Christlieb Products

         The contribution of Christlieb Products founder, Don Christlieb from 1938          to 1996 is well outlined in his book: Recollections of a First Chair          Bassoonist - 52 Years in the Hollywood Studio Orchestras. Don's bassoon,          Heckel # 7855 was purchased from his teacher, Frederick          Moritz, who brought the instrument to Los Angeles in 1936 at the beginning          of his long and illustrious carrier with the Los Angeles Philharmonic          Orchestra.The closely guarded secret of reed making and mystery surrounding          the superior performance characteristics of the Heckel bassoon          became two of the most dynamic challenges Don Christlieb would meet and          overcome in his entire career. 

With          the publication of Notes on the Bassoon Reed, 1945 and his treatise          on Measuring the Conical Bore of the Bassoon - a Clinical Report, 1968,          Don Christlieb made good on his " promise to tell the world." The beneficiaries of the Christlieb treatises were colleagues who incorporated  his research with their manufacturing and production skills to produce          a world presence in the double reed market: Wendel Jones, Jones Double  Reed and Alan Fox, Fox Products Corporation. The research was   equally beneficial to scores of music educators whose students would have  the tools for more consistently successful reed making and the confidence  of performing with American made bassoons.

Don's          life-long association with musicologist, Lawrence Morton, Peter Yates's          successor and organizer of The Monday Evening Concerts series in          Los Angeles, became the catalyst for premiere performances of new works          by major composers. It was Morton's concert series that attracted Robert Craft, Igor          Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez  (Shown above) and Arnold Shoenberg and Karlheinz  Stockhousen.  It was Don's woodwind ensembles that performed new works          of Schoenberg, Hindemith, Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre, and          Stockhausen's Zeitmasse.