"Well, you know what happens when you bend a piece of wood; you squize out some air, therefore there is less left in the wood to resonate! In my limited experience it is the air in the reeds and the structure of their walls that give the spruce/fir tonewood the resonance."
But as the compressed cells become smaller on one side of the bent piece, aren't the cells on the other side getting stretched and bigger, cancelling out the effect?