Playing with the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble

About a month ago, my teacher, Dileep, asked me if I wanted to perform with the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble. The Chicago Clarinet Ensemble was founded in 2007 by Dr. Rose Sperazza who teaches at Northeastern University.  The performance contains mostly college students and adults so it is really exciting to play with them. Everyone has been really nice through the rehearsals even though I'm a lot younger than everyone there. Also, Stanley Drucker, the former principal of the New York Philharmonic, and his wife Naomi Drucker, also an accomplished clarinetist, are playing with us. Stanley Drucker was the principal clarinetist of the Philharmonic for more than 50 years and he has played in more than 10,000 concerts. He even played under Leonard Bernstein! We are performing tonight.

The concert should be a lot of fun. We are playing are Pursuits of Happiness a sextet by Eric Mandat, Hasty Fragments by Edward Yadzinski, Ruth, Rubric-Rational; Realisms-Relationals by Jeff Kowalkowski, Mendelssohn’s duo concerti for two clarinets, which will feature the Druckers, Molly on the Shore by Grainger, and Jupiter from the Planets by Holst. The Mandat, the Yadzinski, and the Kowalkowski are all premiers. I am playing on the Holst, the Grainger, and the Kowalkowski. It is a really fun selection of pieces.

The Pursuits of Happiness is a sextet by Eric Mandat. Performing this piece are Mr. and Mrs. Drucker and Rose Sperazza on Bb clarinet, John Bruce Yeh playing Eb clarinet, his wife Teresa Reilly playing basset horn, and Mr. Tuttle on bass clarinet. There are three movements. The first one is fast and happy and features the Druckers. I especially like it when the Druckers play sweeping notes up and down the clarinets' range extremely quickly while the bass clarinet plays a very low and light harmony. There is one part in the first movement when no one plays except Mr. Drucker. I love this movement. The second movement is slow and intense. This movement seems to probe your mind and look into your deepest hidden feelings. It features Mr. Yeh and his wife very prominently. I can't wait to hear it again tonight.

Yesterday I got to sit on on the Druckers rehearsing the Mendelsson and the sextet.  The Mendelssohn duo concerti are being played by the Drucker being accompanied by the clarinet ensemble. The Druckers are amazing!  Just listening to Mr. Drucker warm-up before the rehearsal was cool. He played five arpeggios in the time it would take me to play one. It was really inspiring to watch him and his wife working with John Bruce Yeh.  I loved every movement of the Mendelssohn concerti, but I especially liked the last movement of the second concerto, the polacca. It was amazing how they moved from register to register without any change in the color of their sound.  I find this really hard to do. They moved beautifully though each register of the clarinet, each dynamic and the different styles of the compositions. I cannot wait to hear him perform tonight!  May I'll even get up the courage to ask Rose to introduce me to the Druckers tonight.  They are legendary clarinetists after all.

Molly on Shore is a quick light piece with a repetitive Irish theme. I am playing fourth clarinet in this song and so I get mostly the beat and the harmony under the melody. This is a great piece, because there is a counter-melody always going on at the same time as the melody. The theme is always consistent but the counter-melody changes and moves in interesting ways. This piece is really good for a clarinet choir because of the beautifully light, pure sound of a a clarinet. John Bruce Yeh is conducting both Molly on the Shore, Jupiter and the Mendelssohn.

Ruth, rubric-rational; realism-relationals is an exotic piece for clarinet choir and synthesizer by Jeff Kowalkowski. It changes time signatures constantly so you always have to be on your toes while performing it. It is a very otherworldly radiant composition. I especially like that there are a couple of duets in the middle of the piece for synthesizer and contrabass clarinet without accompaniment. This makes a really fun combination. I also like the way the composer has combined the Contrabass and Eb clarinets -- not a common pairing! The stark differences in the range of these two instruments create an odd but strangely ethereal effect. At many places in the piece everyone is playing similar parts but not at the same time. That made it very difficult for me to play it yesterday at the rehearsal because I was the only second Bb clarinet there. I think it is an outstanding work.

I love how the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble can sound so much like a full orchestra, especially in a piece like Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity from the Planets. Jupiter is a grand and festive piece. I am playing second clarinet on Jupiter and I get a lot of melody which is exciting. The piece is extremely light and carefree for much of it. During a slower section, the clarinets imitate the low strings and brass very well, who play this part in the original version. I love the ending where the clarinets are like a torrent, flying up and down arpeggios. Jupiter has a great ending with a restatement of the original theme in a fast tempo which keeps crescendoing until the last note.

Anthony McGill and the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble

On Friday, I went to a concert featuring Anthony McGill and the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble. For those of you who don’t know, Anthony McGill is the principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York City. He’s won all sorts of awards, and he is a well known virtuoso in the world of classical musicians. He’s most famous for playing at Obama’s inauguration with Yoyo Ma and Itzak Perlman. He is also my favorite clarinetist. This was a great concert, and I really enjoyed myself.

When he played the Concertino by Carl Maria von Weber, Anthony McGill really showed us what virtuoso he is with an amazing performance. I loved his phrasing and emotional expression. His slow parts had a very sweet and dark tone and his fast parts were very in control. He shaped his phrases so beautifully. His movement matched his musical expression, and he was very fun to watch. After the piece was over, I wanted him to play it again – maybe ten or twenty times.

The Latin American piece Four for Four by Jorge Montilla, started the concert. The bass clarinet solo really stood out. Mr. Tuttle had enormous control, especially the high register. He had a very full and big sound, but sweet. The first movement sounded like the bass clarinet was making a very important speech and the Bb and Eb clarinets were whispering, chattering, and laughing behind his back while he made his very important speech. All four musicians worked together very well.

The second piece they played was called Paquito by Andy Scott. I love this piece! I like how the high and low parts play off of each other, like they’re bouncing. It was like many things happening at the same time in a crowded room. The piece is very busy, but in a good way. The parts split off and go in different directions and come back together again. This was my favorite piece (outside of the McGill performance).

Throughout the entire concert, Rose Sperrazza was very funny between performances. I liked the way she talked to the audience like they were a group of her very good friends. She showed great leadership for the other musicians.

The last performance before the intermission was the world premier of Tres Canciones by Leo Schwartz who was there conducting. The first pieces of the concert were very physical and grounded in reality. This piece was very eerie and otherworldly. It was like you were floating around in a dreamworld. The third movement was like you woke up and you saw things how they really were again and that the world wasn’t just a dream. I thought the counter-tenor was odd. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a counter-tenor before, but Lon Ellenberger's performance was very good and it helped create the floating feel of the piece.

The Merit School clarinetists played Simple Gifts arranged by Ricky Lombardo. This arrangement of this famous American folk song played by students of Merit School made me think of the Aaron Copland Appalachian Springs movement that features this theme in many variations, and the John Williams piece from the inauguration. It was a great choice because it is a great tribute to Anthony McGill who was a student of Merit when he was young.

The concert ended with First Suite in Eb by Gustav Holst. It was nice to hear a Holst piece that WASN’T the Planets. I really liked how the clarinets could cover all of the parts of an orchestral piece that was written for many different instruments. It was neat how the clarinets sounded like clarinets, but at the same time, they gave the impression of strings and brass, and filled up the auditorium with their sound. Wow!

I wish I could travel in time so I could watch the concert again.

Three for Three Concert at Northeastern University

On Monday, I went to Northeastern University to see a piano trio perform "Three for Three." The trio was made up of a great clarinetist named Rose Sperrazza, a cellist from the CSO named Gary Stucka, who was also great, and Shirley Trissell, a pianist. I'm not sure, but I think I saw her at MYA playing the piano accompaniments for a master class. She's really good.

I went to the concert with Sam Sitzmann, a fifth grader who is a friend of mine. Sam is an outstanding cellist. The group played trios by Beethoven, Muczynski, and Brahms. I am playing the Beethoven, and my friend Sam and my brother Ari are working on the cello and piano parts so hopefullly, we'll be able to play it together soon. It took a long time to get from Buffalo Grove to Northeastern, so I was glad to have Sam with us. When we finally arrived, we had to look for a little while to find the recital hall where the performance was going to take place. We also had to find the parking office to get a parking permit so that our car wouldn't get a ticket. When we finally did all those things, we went to the performance, which was going to start in another 15 minutes.

They opened with the Beethoven. The first movement was really good with some technical sections that are hard to play. They played the first movement quite beautifully, and they made it look easy. The 2nd movement was carried off with great expression, and I enjoyed that a lot as well. While I enjoyed the third movement, and the musicians communicated very well together when they played it, I didn't like one decision that they made. Instead of putting in a slight pause between each variation, like a breath mark, they played through each variation in a row without pausing. The third movement is almost like a bunch of little songs (or variations on a simple theme) stuck together all in a row. I have a version of this piece on MP3 played by Richard Stoltzmann and Yoyo Ma, and in this recording there is a little more space between each variation. I could be wrong, but I like that better, because it there is time to prepare for the next variation, since each variation has a different feel. Still, I really liked the way they played this piece.

The second piece they played was the Muczynski. I think the 3 musicians played it really well, even though I don't think I like the piece very much. I have only heard it once, and I have to hear it a few more times before I decide. It is very wild and contemporary. After a short intermission, they played the best piece of the series by Brahms. The first movement of it was really fun and expressive. The second movement was beautifully smooth. The third movement was really nice and the last movement was really exciting. The last movement sounded very much like a conversation between the instruments, and when the mood of the piece changed, the musicians changed with it very well. I really want to play the Brahms now. Sam said his favorite piece of the three was the Brahms too.

I loved this concert, and I want to see all of these musicans perform again.