<\/p>\n
Clarinet players are sometimes a bit<\/strong><\/span> behind the times. If you subscribe to The Clarinet<\/em> magazine, you’ll see.\u00a0 There are a lot of photos.<\/p>\n Toodles in ’12. Benny Goodman for President.<\/p>\n Many clarinetists, myself included, mimic Goodman.\u00a0 He’s the latest thing. \u00a0We stand ram-rod straight, wear suits, and have facial muscles twisted tighter than model airplane propellers.<\/p>\n U.S. military band clarinetists are a subspecies of clarinet antediluvians.\u00a0 They are all sergeants for some reason. \u00a0These soldiers aren’t shimmying under any barbed wire fences for you.\u00a0 They’re busy practicing, trying to get into The Clarinet<\/em> magazine. <\/em><\/p>\n Clarinetists gather annually <\/strong>at Clarinetfest,<\/span><\/span> Clarinetopia and Clarabell.\u00a0 (The last one is made up.)\u00a0 At these conventions, the workshop leaders are called clinicians.\u00a0 They come from SMU, KSU and OSU.\u00a0 Has to have an S in it.\u00a0 The clinicians teach college students how to become clinicians.<\/p>\n When I was a clinician at the Ohio Music Educators Association conference, I was a bit light in the bio department. No “B.M. from SMU,” no “soloed with the Wyoming Symphony,” no “studied with Hans WorseThan Most.”<\/p>\n I wrote I was the clarinetist and leader of Yiddishe Cup.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Not every clarinet player looks like<\/strong><\/span> an insurance agent.\u00a0 There’s Don Byron, the black guy with dreadlocks, and Paquito D’Rivera, the Cubano<\/em> humano.<\/em> Plus there are at least a dozen curly-haired Jewish clarinetists who look like Larry Fine from the Three Stooges<\/em>.\u00a0 The principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra, Franklin Cohen, is a Larry Fine impersonator.\u00a0 Me too.<\/p>\n A black acquaintance, who ran into me in a restaurant, said, “Hi, Frank.” \u00a0I corrected him, and the black man blushed, sort of.<\/p>\n I played two surprise birthday parties for Frank Cohen.\u00a0 Those were scary affairs because at least eight clarinet players were at each gig.\u00a0 Some of the clarinetists played “Happy Birthday” in a clarinet choir, which is similar to a vocal chorus, except it’s all clarinets: big, medium and little clarinets.<\/p>\n I, too, own a small clarinet — <\/strong><\/span>a C clarinet.\u00a0 The C is more piercing than the standard Bb horn, which is my main axe. (Bb is what everybody is familiar with.) There are also Eb clarinets, which are smaller than Cs.\u00a0 And even more obscure key clarinets.<\/p>\n The thing I never understood about music: <\/strong><\/span>Why all the different keys?\u00a0 Just get rid of some of them. Pare down.<\/p>\n Sid Beckerman, the legendary klez clarinetist, said, “To you, D minor is a key.\u00a0 To me, it’s a living.”\u00a0 D minor is the key of choice for klezmer clarinetists.<\/p>\n And what’s with transposing? <\/strong>I<\/span><\/span>f a clarinetist plays with a pianist or guitarist, the clarinet player has to play different notes than the ones written on the page.<\/p>\n I’m pretty good at it.\u00a0 When I see a written “C,” I can play “D” on the clarinet.\u00a0 It took me a while.\u00a0 It’s like a Swede learning Danish.<\/p>\n Here’s what is impossible:<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>transposing quickly on the alto sax.\u00a0 When you see “C,” you play “A,” the relative minor.\u00a0 If the tune is incredibly slow, like a waltz, it’s doable.<\/p>\n Transposition keeps the riff-raff and dabblers off the bandstand.\u00a0 Just like in Judaism, where the prayer book goes backwards and the rabbi skips chunks of prayers and jumps around in the book without telling you.\u00a0 Just to make it hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clarinet players are sometimes a bit behind the times. If you subscribe to The Clarinet magazine, you’ll see.\u00a0 There are a lot of photos. Toodles in ’12. Benny Goodman for President. Many clarinetists, myself included, mimic Goodman.\u00a0 He’s the latest thing. \u00a0We stand ram-rod straight, wear suits, and have facial muscles twisted tighter than model […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9006,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions\/9006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}