Hot News December 2004
Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic - Chicago, Illinois USA
The MidWest Band and Orchestra Clinic, held annually in Chicago, Illinois with an annual enrollment of over 18,000 participants, presented its saturate array of events including major concerts featuring selected Bands, Orchestras, all kinds of ensembles, both school and professional, and also featuring the Premiere Service Bands, including this year 2 appearances of the US Marine Band from Washington. Consistent during this conference was the appearance of Clinicians covering a myriad of subjects dealing with music teaching, instrument issues, performance enhancements, an also a means for several Music/Education organizations to hold annual meetings involving their agendas. Below is a summary dealing with Clarinet issues sponsored by Buffet-Crampon.
Clarinet Emergency Room
Solving Performance Problems in Your Clarinet Section
targets skill development for advancing clarinetists and features audio clips of student groups, a question and answer forum, conference notes and clarinet teaching materials.
This session will focus on solving performance problems associated with clarinet parts in popular band literature, grades 1 through 5, including suggestions and materials for developing tone quality, finger technique, and tonguing skills in the clarinet section.
(I worked with the Vandercook College clarinet section in front of the audience and targeted common issues with: embouchure, tone quality, technique development - as it applies to playing various grades of wind lit - and the ever persistent problems of articulation).
Paula Corley is a career music educator with 19 years of teaching experience in the public school system. Most were spent in the Frisco and Plano, Texas school districts, located in two of the fastest growing areas in the country. She taught beginning clarinet classes in area schools and developed her beginning clarinet method entitled “So You Want To Play The Clarinet.”
Paula’s numerous conference presentations on clarinet pedagogy include those for such organizations as the Texas Music Educators Association, Texas Bandmasters Association, Arkansas Music Educators Association, North Carolina Music Educators Association and for the prestigious Midwest International Band and Orchestra Conference. 2005 mark’s Paula’s second appearance at the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium and her sixth as a faculty member of Indiana University’s Clarinet Teaching Workshop with internationally recognized teacher and performer, Howard Klug.
Paula is currently Instructor of Clarinet and Music Education at Mars Hill College, a small liberal arts college just north of Asheville, North Carolina. Paula is a member of the International Clarinet Association and of Sigma Alpha Iota, serving as the advisor for the Lambda Beta Chapter at Mars Hill College. She is Principal Clarinet with the Asheville Lyric Opera Orchestra and is an educational consultant for The Music Group, importers of Buffet Clarinets, and for Coda Music, developers of SMARTMUSIC intelligent accompaniment. A graduate of Mississippi State University (BME) and Southern Methodist University (MM), Paula has also done postgraduate study at the University of North Texas and in 2000 was selected for the Chamber Music Workshop at Lincoln Center with David Shifrin. Her teachers include Dr. Warren Lutz, Stephen Girko, Dr. John Scott, and Dr. Jim Gillespie. Paula has been selected for both Who's Who among America's High School and College Teachers.
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15 December 2004
Clarinet Days 8-15 December 2004
Jerusalem Music Centre
The Jerusalem Music Centre was founded in 1972 by Maestro Isaac Stern and was conceived as a meeting place for musicians, experienced as well as young ones from all over the world, for the benefit of the developing musical culture of this country. Many masters have visited us in the course of the last 30 years, among them Pablo Casals, Arthur Rubinstein, Henryk Szeryng, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Isaac Stern, Alexander Schneider, Murray Perahia, Franz Helmerson, Tabea Zimmermann, to name but a few. The Jerusalem Music Centre is not a school. We have neither regular faculty nor enrolled students. However, intensive activity of teaching, master classes, workshops, courses, conferences and coaching takes place throughout the year.
Every year in December, the Jerusalem Music Centre holds a 3-5 day course for clarinetists. Our special guests in this year’s course, which took place on December 8th through December 15th 2004, were Sabine Meyer, Rainer Wehle, and Wolfgang Meyer (Trio di Clarone) from Germany, and Antony Pay from England.
The courses included master classes, private lessons, chamber music playing, and experimentation in solo playing with orchestra, under the direction of Antony Pay. The works to be played with orchestral accompaniment included Mozart’s Concerto for Clarinet in A Major and Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in the orchestral version, accompaniment by a string orchestra (the movements to be played are the first, second and fourth). Participants in the course also studied works for solo clarinet especially commissioned for the event from composer Menachem Wiesenberg. In addition, each instrumentalist was asked to prepare a work for the master class with piano accompaniment, according to his own choice.
At the conclusion of the course, two festive concerts were held, one in the YMCA Auditorium, Jerusalem, and the other in the auditorium of the Israel Conservatory, Tel-Aviv. Participants in the concerts were chosen by the guest artists.
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SINGING THROUGH A WOODEN PIPE
Noam Ben Zeev
The Israel Chamber Orchestra, conductor and soloist, Anthony Pay, clarinet, (England) with young clarinetists, in works by Mozart, Weisenberg, Gershwin and others. "Clarinet Days" at the Israel Music Conservator..
Dozens of young students and their teachers last night filled the auditorium of the Israel Music Conservatory, anxious for a demonstration of how indeed the clarinet should be played, and to hear the perfect playing to which the aspiring student should aim. Throughout the entire concert the audience could applaud and rejoice in the array of youthful clarinet talent, students who ascended the platform, all of them playing with musicality and a beautiful tone, and to marvel at the weeklong project "Clarinet Days" organized by the Jerusalem Music Center, during which the youngsters enjoyed a concentrated course of private lessons, concerts, master classes and ensemble playing.
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However, the highlight of the week was reserved for the finale - last night's concert at which Anthony Pay, internationally renowned clarinetist, conductor and teacher from England, played and conducted Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major. Pay demonstrated how putting aside tradition, and replacing it with a bold modern approach, liberated from accepted conventions, can produce the most interesting and relevant results. It began with Pay's choice of instrument – a clarinet built at the beginning of the 19th century, with an unusual appearance, an instrument lacking the clarity and agility which characterize the modern clarinet, an instrument with its own sound colors. Pay simply sang, through his brown wooden pipe, and in his interpretation, the Mozart concerto sounded dramatic and exciting, expressive and full of humor, as we have never heard before.
Pay's musical approach to the orchestra and to the audience, completed the picture. Without posing, and as befits an Englishman, with not a hint of self-importance, with superb taste and with a judicious measure of humor and under-statement, he spoke and explained, even between the movements. In his conducting he allowed the orchestral musicians to express themselves, without his guiding hand, simply through listening to each other and to the music. This independence served the Israel Chamber Orchestra musicians well.
