List of recorder players
A recorder player is a musician who plays the recorder, a flute-like woodwind musical instrument. The recorder is often used in teaching the rudiments of music, as it is cheap to buy and relatively easy to play at a certain level of accomplishment (although its mastery is as demanding as that of any other instrument). Because of this widespread use of the recorder, the list of people who can play it is enormous. Therefore, this article lists three categories of people: firstly, those who are notable recorder players and are widely recognised as performers on the instrument; secondly, those who are not famous as recorder players but who have used the instrument as a notable feature of their work; and, thirdly, people who are famous for some other reason but are known to be recreational recorder players.
List of notable recorder players
Other musicians who have made notable use of the recorder
Notable people who also play the recorder
- Taylor Duncan
- Nicole Zientek
- James Dean apparently learnt to play Bach on the recorder
- Patrick Troughton, who often played while in character as the Second Doctor in Doctor Who
- Umberto Eco, Italian novelist, author of The Name of the Rose
- George Bernard Shaw
- Richard Stallman
- Sarah Vowell
- Rainn Wilson who also plays the recorder while in character as Dwight Schrute in The Office
- Rasmus Fleischer
- Bonnie Wright
- Hilary de Pres
- Abe Monsborough
- Benjamin Britten, English composer
- Peter Pears, English tenor
- Bob Hope, American comedian
- Yehudi Menuhin, violinist
- Imogen Holst, English music educator
- Charles Darwin's grandson
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, character in Shakespeare's play of the same name
- Georg Philip Telemann, German composer
- Paul McCartney, Beatle, taught by mother of Jane Asher (famous cook, actress etc.)
- Brian Jones, Rolling Stone
- Bruce Springsteen, popular singer
- Eddie Marshall, US jazz drummer/recorder player
- Johann Matheson, German composer & music critic
- Arnold Dolmetsch, instrument maker, scholar & musician
- Howard Mayer-Brown, American musicologist
- Robert De Niro, in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein -- although his back is to the camera while playing, after he turns around he can be seen to have what looks like a Moeck "Flauto Leggero" alto in his hand.
- Robert Donington, English musicologist
- Margaret Donington, sister of the above
- John Manifold, Australian poet & scholar
- Rodney Hall, Australian novelist
- Arthur Waley, English poet and translator who rendered major Japanese literary classics into English.
- Friedrich Gulda, pianist/composer
- King Henry IV
- Samuel Pepys
- Henry Purcell
- Laurie Lee (see Mortimer: Clinging to the Wreckage)
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