\nFrom the <\/em>Cleveland Plain Dealer (7\/24\/24) . . .<\/em><\/p>\n
The musical influences in my life<\/p>\n
by Bert Stratton<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS,<\/strong> <\/span>Ohio \u2014 I played music with a prodigy. I didn\u2019t know he was a prodigy. He and I were in junior high. He played piano. I played clarinet. I just googled him \u2014 William Goldenberg. He wound up at Oberlin College, Julliard, and then Indiana University. He became a professor of piano at a university. I didn\u2019t know him that well; he was the son of a friend of my parents.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t in the prodigy\u2019s league. Not even close. But I did practice a lot. I enjoyed the \u201ctyping\u201d aspect of clarinet \u2014 learning where to place my fingers on the instrument. I blame my parents and my clarinet teacher for much of my musical shortcomings. Leonard Bernstein was not on the TV at our home. There was no \u201cPeter and the Wolf\u201d by Prokofiev. Harry Golub, my clarinet teacher, was an alumnus of the Ohio State University concert band and owned a music store in South Euclid. He sold guitars, bongos and band instruments.<\/p>\n I entered The Contest every year in junior high. The Contest \u2014 as we kids called it \u2014 was a music-recital competition sponsored by the state music-educators\u2019 association. Young musicians would play their repertoire in front of teacher-judges, who would give us ratings of I, II or III.<\/p>\n I often got III \u2014 the worst. I would get nervous and lose my place in the sheet music. Worse, I didn\u2019t know how the piece was supposed to sound because I had never heard a professional recording of it. I especially remember a train wreck on Mozart\u2019s \u201cDivertimento in D Major, Minuetto,\u201d at a contest held at Moody Junior High School in Bedford around 1963. I lost my place several times and had to start over from the beginning. My prodigy accompanist was of no help.<\/p>\n Classical musicians<\/strong><\/span> tell you, \u201cI studied with Joe So-and-So, who studied with Marie So-and-So, who studied with Maestro So-and-So.\u201d It\u2019s biblical \u2013 the lineage obsession in classical music.<\/p>\n Philip Setzer<\/p><\/div>\n My pianist developed a long, impressive bio over the years, but not as long as another guy \u2014 from my Little League \u2014 who intimidated me even more. He was Philip Setzer, a violinist I went to grade school with. At holiday school concerts at Victory Park School in South Euclid, I\u2019d botch \u201cThe Theme from Exodus,\u201d and Setzer would ace-play a Brahms sonata. Phil was a founder of the world-renowned Emerson String Quartet, which, until its members\u2019 recent retirement, was like the New York Yankees of string quartets. Setzer\u2019s mother and father were violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra; he attended many Cleveland Orchestra concerts as a kid. That helped.<\/p>\n In the early 1990s, I played a benefit concert with two Cleveland Orchestra musicians. It was a fundraiser for a Jewish day school. The orchestra musicians asked me whom I had studied with. I said, \u201cNobody.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Nobody: Harry Golub. His store was on Warrensville Center Road at East Antisdale Road. The structure now houses South Euclid Hardware. The building \u2014 in the 1960s \u2014 also featured a hair salon and a kosher butcher shop, run by Mr. Golub\u2019s father.<\/p>\n Harry Golub<\/strong> <\/span>often ate Hebrew National salami sandwiches during my lessons. That stunk. He was into real estate. He built a four-suite apartment building across the street from the music store. So he owned two buildings: the music building and the apartment building. He named the apartment building after his daughter, Joyce. Mr. Golub, by his example, taught me about real estate and very little about music. Maybe that\u2019s why my parents sent me there for lessons.<\/p>\n Bert Stratton, a frequent contributor, lives in Cleveland Heights and has also written for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He writes the blog \u201cKlezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Cleveland Plain Dealer (7\/24\/24) . . . The musical influences in my life by Bert Stratton CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio \u2014 I played music with a prodigy. I didn\u2019t know he was a prodigy. He and I were in junior high. He played piano. I played clarinet. I just googled him \u2014 William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32112,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32056\/revisions\/32112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/phil-setzer.jpeg\")