Most modern bass clarinets are straight-bodied, with a small upturned silver-colored metal bell and curved metal neck. Someone who plays a bass clarinet is called a bass clarinettist or a bass clarinetist. Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare (in contrast to the regular A clarinet, which is quite common in classical music). Like the more common soprano B ♭ clarinet, it is usually pitched in B ♭ (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B ♭), but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B ♭ clarinet. The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Two short bass clarinets, on the right side made from boxwood