Post-Christmas Reality Check

Some kind souls gave me a few books: Bad Boy of Music George Antheil; The Roaring Silence- John Cage: A Life David Revill; The Music of Elliot Carter David Schiff. Gotta love your parents...

Self-titling a book Bad Boy of Music? He'd damned well better be wearing some kind of black leather jacket and/or have a pack of cigarrettes rolled up in one sleeve. Granted, if it's both, it might look a little strange.

Today I had a lesson with Bob Listokin. He was the perfect teacher for me when I decided to attend my last two years of high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He took a schmuck who thought he could play clarinet and helped him become a schmuck who could almost play clarinet. Basically, every day I draw on things he said in lessons or exercises he assigned. My students see quite a bit of material that I lifted directly from him. After heading off to Conservatory, I occasionally called him to say hello or ask for advice. Today was the first time since High School I actually played for him in a lesson situation.

I played a piece for him that I first began studying with him, only to continue studying off and on for the next eight years. Needless to say, I felt that I was getting a little stale with my performance of this particular piece.

What does this -great- teacher do? He gave me little to work on with this specific piece, but managed to relate my concerns to clarinet playing and performing in general. There were some exercises (extraordinarily slow and quite simple in concept) that uncovered immediately some fundamental flaws in my playing. He managed to light a spark that gives me plenty to practice for this piece in particular, but quite a bit to practice for becoming a better clarinet player. Now that's a lesson.

We talked a bit about possible career steps and ways to proceed to grow as a musician. Again...That's a lesson. Why did I wait so long to take a lesson? I don't want to think about it, but I certainly won't wait very long before I go back.

Gonna try and take a run in the morning...I've been slacking of for the past few...months. This winter is going to be busy, so I'd better come up with an exercise routine again for a little stress relief.

A "Shout-out" for New-ish music

On Feb. 1st of the new year, I'm supposed to have learned Pozzi Escot's new-ish Clarinet Concerto. Actually, as of that day, I'm supposed to perform the piece in Boston. I should have it learned and ready to go several weeks before that so I can rehearse the piece properly. Here's the thing: it's got a range from F#3 to about C#7. Yup, that's right, I'm threatening to bring out a mouse on stage and squeeze the poor bastard for those high notes. He'll have an easier time hitting those notes than I will. Several of these notes are extraordinarily -soft- as well. Guess that's what practice time is for. Oh, and the piece is about 5 minutes long...Not exactly a Sequenza-like undertaking.

Why is the piece new-ish and not new? Well, it's about a year old and was performed once. I took a look at the score and decided that it was a fantastic piece. It's short and beautiful and I should play it. Composers are almost always keen on people playing their music...Ms. Escot was no different.

The piece deserves to be played more than once. So often, we folks in the new music business give the first performance of the piece only to have the poor thing disappear afterwards. Why? I believe it's because we're frequently more occupied with our own importance as performers than the music. Imagine that...new music performers are just as uppity and self-important as old music performers. Some people like to be known as that guy who's constantly giving premiers. That means that, as a performer, you're having to slog through a lot of really awful music. I like the warm fuzzies that come from promoting the growth of the repertoire, but I'm also tired of presenting awful music just because it's new. We're abusing the audience's trust by filling programs with second rate crap. Of course, this only encourages composers to produce new music on a time table rather than take their time to write a piece good enough for multiple performances.

So, performers: Dig through your library and pick out those pieces that deserve to be played again. Find those composers whose pieces you dug at a concert and get a copy. I've made it a point recently to ask composers for pieces that I either dug or heard from trusted sources that I'll dig. As a result, I've got a couple of .pdf files of pieces sitting in my email-box.

Oh yeah...Sometimes they'll just say "Why don't a write a piece for you?" Yeah...Why not?

Crap, now I've got to find a program for all of these deserving pieces. I knew I was in trouble the moment I started trying to think.

Narcissism at its worst

I've taken the plunge and decided to stroke my ego in this way because I'm sure that my friends are tired of hearing it. I'm always yapping about something...Whether it's the inaccessibility of today's classical music performances, the dearth of new music on programs, the dearth of music with new ideas on programs...

Of course, since I'm an uppity clarinet player, I've got suggestions for all of these issues. We'll get to them as I bumble through everything else along the way.

A First Post

Oh dear...Looks like I've gone and started blogging.

Now I'm checking my ability to edit.