Contrabass oboe Baroque composers. This apparently was an oboe-type instrument in the bassoon range. It had, nonetheless, a distinct tonal quality of its own. Richard Strauss states, in his edition of Hector Berlioz's "Treatise on Instrumentation", that its tone "...had not the slightest similarity with the low tones of the bassoon." Despite this distinction, the contrabass oboe never became popular or widely used, and few remain today. Contrabass oboe The contrabass oboe is a double reed woodwind instrument in the key of C or F, sounding two octaves or an octave and a fourth (respectively) lower than the standard oboe. Current research,
Oboe oboe remains uncommon in jazz music, but there have been notable uses of the instrument. Some early bands in the 1920s and '30s, most notably that of Paul Whiteman, included it for coloristic purposes. The multi-instrumentalist Garvin Bushell (1902–1991) played the oboe in jazz bands as early as 1924 and used the instrument throughout his career, eventually recording with John Coltrane in 1961. Gil Evans featured oboe in sections of his famous "Sketches of Spain" collaboration with trumpeter Miles Davis. Though primarily a tenor saxophone and flute player, Yusef Lateef was among the first (in 1961) to use the oboe