K. Ge Reeds - OnLine Store

Kexun began studying oboe at the Central Conservatorium in Beijing and graduated in 1983 . Soon after, he took a position as oboist in the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and in 1985 he won the City of London Mayor's Scholarship. The following year Kexun found himself in London studying oboe under Anthony Camden and John Lawley at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

In 1988 Ke-xun's skill was recognized by Mike Britton from T.W Howarth , and as a result , he began making reeds for Howarth to sell, in order to support his studies. In 1989 Ke-xun followed Anthony Camden and moved to Australia, and while continuing his oboe studies, Ke-xun taught oboe reed making at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. He also accepted a further invitation to give visiting master classes in oboe reed making at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

By this time demand for Ke-xun's reeds was increasing dramatically, and he soon made the decision to become a full time oboe reed maker. As the orders mounted , he began to explore ways to supply reeds more efficiently without sacrificing quality.

It took many years for Ke-xun to establish his unique reed-making method, which is quite unorthodox. This method required the gouger to be custom made, so that the gouged cane dimensions would be precise. In order to get exact and consistent results, he had to sharpen the gouger blade himself. The most important process of all was modifying the existing profile machine to suit his own requirements, a development that involved much experimentation and painstakingly repeated procedures. Following this time-consuming process, finally Ke-xun successfully transformed his scraping skills into his modified profile machine.

Among double reed players , it has been previously accepted that hand-made reeds are of better quality than those made with a machine . However, since Ke-xun has developed his method and his own profile , he is now challenging this long held view .Ke-xun is now certain that his machine made reeds are of much better quality , and more consistent and accurate than his own hand made reeds. His method is the fruit of lengthy research and his experience as an oboist, reed maker, and now also as an engineer, modifying his own profile and gouging machine.

K.Ge Reeds has a branch office in Shanghai which handles the harvesting of tube cane as well as processing the cane to the tie-on stage. Then Ke-xun does the final profiling work himself to ensure a perfect finish.Many professional players , either playing in world-class orchestras or performing as soloists, exclusively use Ke-xun's reeds, and there are even orchestras in which the entire oboe section is using his reeds .Some of these players (who are using Ke-xun's reeds), have stopped making their own reeds, as they are much happier with the quality of our reeds .

Recently we have been receiving many repeat orders from the USA, which is a result of the popularity there for our "W" (long scraped) reeds. Ke-xun has also successfully applied his oboe reed-making skills to produce a modified bassoon profile machine, and now Ke-xun's bassoon reeds are quickly growing in popularity.

Another relatively new product for KGe-Reeds is cane. To produce reeds of consistently high quality, a good and reliable source of cane is essential. What better way to ensure that than to grow it yourself, which is precisely what Ke-xun has done. The cane used for Ke-xun's reeds comes from Anhui Province in China, which has been a famous cane-producing region since about 1960, supplying cane for local oboists, clarinetists and bassoonists.Ke-xun discovered that the climate of Anhui is very similar to that of the cane-producing Var region in France, but also he discovered that the cane from Anhui had much greater resilience and a higher fibre density than other canes, including the French cane. The cane from Anhui is generally of medium to medium hardness, its texture is silky, fine and smooth, and its colour is yellow to golden brown. Above all, its best quality is its consistency.

At K.GE REEDS, we only use wild cane that is picked by workers trained and employed exclusively by us. This cane undergoes a rigorous process of selection by our trained staff, and as a result we can assure our customers a very high usage rate. As an oboe reed maker, and now for bassoon, Ke-xun has experimented with many different varieties of cane, and has come to the conclusion that the cane from Anhui is the best he has ever used. All of our reeds have been made with this cane for the last six years. Since making this cane available to our customers, it has rapidly grown in popularity internationally amongst many players, both professionals and students.

I was born in the year of the cow in the autumn of 1961. I had a big brother who is 11 years older than me, and when my father died when I was 4 years old and my mother was busy working in a factory supporting us, my brother would walk me home from school. At school we sang patriotic songs in our class of 50 boys and girls and we learnt to love Chairman Mao. I was a hard working student who and I always finished my homework. When I was 10 years old I began to learn my first musical instrument, the "ehru", a traditional chinese instrument with two strings and a bow. I enjoyed it alot and practised every day.

I soon auditioned and was accepted on "erhu" at the local "children's palace", a school for the Arts, both traditional and modern. Foreign tourists would come to visit and the brightest children would be "shown off" by the proud administrators. I now had lessons twice a week with Mr. Wang , who was very strict. No matter, it was a great privilege for me or anyone to have lessons there. I played in a class with 15 others in a string or "erhu" band.

One day when my friend Jing Xia and I were on our way to our lesson we were stopped on the stairway by some "officials" and then we were asked to open our mouths, and these people proceeded to inspect our teeth. They asked us to meet with them after our class with Mr. Wang. It so transpired that these "officials" were western classical music teachers from the Middle School of the Central Conservatorium of Music in Beijing and our meeting with them turned out to be an audition with ear tests involving singing and clapping. For three months we heard nothing more, which was quite disappointing as we both had dreams of studying western music in Beijing. But unknown to us they had been testing hundreds and thousands of children throughout Shanghai.

Then one day the school music teacher ran excitedly into my classroom and shouted in front of the whole class that I had been accepted into the Beijing Conservatorium! I had one week to get myself to Beijing as did my good friend Jing Xia, who had also been selected along with eight other children from Shanghai. It was a big thing to leave my family, I was only 12 years old, but my mother was very happy and proud that I should receive such a special opportunity. So from this time I was looked after by the school of music in Beijing.

When I arrived, I immediately began to take piano lessons and I was interviewed by every instrumental teacher and it was finally decided that I would study Oboe! Jing Xia, my best friend, took bassoon as his instrument and we would share a bunk in a room with eight others for the next three years. Altogether we studied six years in the Middle School or high school and then I moved on to tertiary for another four years. Other students at this time to study in my years were Tan Dun (composer - "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") and Lan Shui (chief conductor - Singapore Symphony).

I practiced long hours and of course struggled with reeds and some very primitive reed-making equipment. My gouger was a wooden block and a chisel for cutting and I used a rudimentary East German shaper. I had started to learn reed-making when I was 14 years old with cane from An Hui province, which is where I now get my cane for my reed-making business and I use it exclusively as I have found it better now than the French/Spanish grown cane that I persevered with for many years since.

In the middle school I learned to play Chinese melodies and studies. Only in the tertiary Conservatoriums were we allowed to play Western compositions for our instruments as the Cultural Revolution was in full swing before 1976 and we were banned from playing Western Music. Finally, after completing my studies, I won a job in the Shanghai Symphony and Jing Xia won a job in the Beijing Opera Orchestra.

The Shanghai Symphony was my first experience in an orchestra anywhere and I had to learn a lot very quickly! Many of the colleagues I met at that time are now some of my closest and oldest friends.

My next stroke of good fortune again came in the Year of the Cow (1985) when the Mayor of London (whose name escapes me) visited Shanghai. The Mayor of Shanghai gave him a gift, but he was unfortunately unprepared and had no gift to offer in return, and thus in a moment of inspiration , he had the idea to give a scholarship to a musician in the Shanghai Symphony to study in London at the Guild Hall School of Music.

As Anthony Camden was a good friend of his, he decided that the scholarship should go to an oboist, which is how I found myself at Heathrow Airport on January 6, 1986, after six months of red-tape, in which a valuable passport and visa had been procured. Unfortunately, nobody at the Guild Hall was there to meet me and in faltering English I managed to explain my predicament and after several phone calls by airport staff on my behalf, four hours later, someone from the Guild Hall came to meet me.

My teachers in London were John Lawley and then Anthony Camden, and after two years when my scholarship began to come to an end, I began my career as a reed-maker with the encouragement of John Lawley and Mike Britton from Howarth. This sustained me until Anthony Camden invited me to come to Australia. I liked it very much in Brisbane, and soon with Anthony's support, I applied for residency and the rest is history and K.Ge Reeds was born.

The wheel has now turned and now a large part of K.Ge Reeds business is based in Shanghai, with twenty employees both in the workshop and in the warehouse where the cane from An Hui province is stored, selected, prepared and matured. I have now found my own source of cane from there. The field is supervised by a local family and harvested each January by people from the local village.

I now have the opportunity to regularly visit my family and friends in Shanghai which I love doing even though my home is now in Melbourne with my beautiful wife Yoriko and our lovely daughter, Lana.

-Ke-xun

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