Thom de Klerk (Thomas Johannes Josephus) (10 May 1912, The Hague, Netherlands – 13 October 1966, Abcoude). Dutch bassoonist, double reed maker, music teacher, conductor and music director. Thom de Klerk was the first solo bassoonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1935 until 1966. He was successful with the directors Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum and Bernard Haitink. Guest directors like Eugen Jochum, Arturo Toscanini and Pierre Monteux made special requests for his presence in the orchestra. Study Thom de Klerk studied at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague with Jacq. Poons, an old school teacher who let his pupils study musical scales for hours on end. Some of Poons’s other pupils were David Meyer and Louis Stotijn, who both later became solo bassoonists in the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague. In 1935 Thom de Klerk, aged twenty-three, won the appointment to first solo bassoonist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Willem Mengelberg. Building bassoons Just after the Second World War, de Klerk was invited to be a consultant to the renowned builder of music instruments Cabart in Paris. The story goes that during the Second World War the Nazis had forced the French oboe factory Cabart to build German bassoons, though the archive proving or disproving this account was lost. The bassoons produced after the Second World War upon approval received the hallmark Cabart/de Klerk. In 1950, Thom de Klerk started his own bassoon atelier on the top floor of his home in Amsterdam. Later, he expanded into a larger atelier in the very heart of that city on a historical street called the Nes, where the Flemish Cultural Centre has now been built. The number of bassoons produced in total remained modest though. The talents of Thom de Klerk were many, however being a business man was not one of them. He left the day-to-day running of the business to his in-laws and the bassoon atelier went bankrupt in 1952. Bassoonist De Klerk was an extrovert and he did not hide the extremities of his character. Living his life boldly, at least in the eyes of the average person of the fifties, which according to de Klerk’s son Thomas was perhaps rooted in his insecure home life as a child. His father once told him the story that once as a child he came home from school to discover that his parents had moved