Clarinetfest 2012: Day Two

Trying out the new Walter Grabner Mouthpiece.  They're fantastic.  I bought one!

On Thursday, the exhibition hall opened up for the first time.  There were clarinets everywhere!  They had every major brand of clarinet that is played in the United States.  There were rows upon rows of Backun barrels and bells, tons of sheet music, Rossi clarinets, Italian clarinets, Backun clarinets, Selmer clarinets, and every Buffet clarinet that is currently being made, mouthpieces, everything!  I was really excited to come back and try the clarinets when I had time, but I had to get to my rehearsal with Dr. Fountain, the pianist who was playing with the high school soloist competitors.

Walter Grabner mouthpieces

Dr. Fountain was really good.  All of his rhythms were perfectly correct (which are very hard in the Martinu) and his tempos were just right.  He was a skinny, red-headed pianist who always has a smile on his face, and he was really good at putting everyone at ease with his friendly manner.  He was a pleasure to work with.

Trying out Rossi clarinets.

However, I ran into a huge problem that morning.  I had brought only one good reed with me to Lincoln!  Don't do that, by the way.  It's a really bad idea.  I had brought other reeds, but none of them would respond for me, and the one I had brought to play had somehow gotten racked.  It SERIOUSLY affected my tone,s moothness and articulation in really very bad ways.  I was now dreading playing for the competition on a cracked reed, and I was almost in a panic!  My mom and I had looked earlier at the clarinet exhibition, but we found no Legere booth there.  They had Rico and VanDoren booths, but no Legere exhibition.  I always use Legere reeds, and now was not the time to make a change.  My mom and I were both surprised at the absence of a Legere booth.  The Legere reeds are gaining in popularity, and I would think that more people would be selling them and that there would be a Legere booth at the ICA clarinet exhibition.

Buffets!

My mom tried calling the Legere dealership in Canada to see where in Nebraska we might be able to get more reeds.  He was incredibly nice and offered to send me as many reeds as I might need overnight.  The problem was, the competition was at 9am the next day, so even Fedex wouldn't be able to get them to us in time.

Trying out Backun barrels.

Luckily, while I was rehearsing with Dr. Fountain, my mom found a booth at the exhibition that did sell Legere reeds.  They must not have been out when we walked through the first time, or more likely, we overlooked them.  So thank you to, Wiener Music for saving me.
 

Backun barrels -- so pretty!

International Clarinet Association Clarinet Fest 2012: Day One

My mom and I arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska Wednesday evening for Clarinetfest 2012.  By the time we got checked in, registration had closed five minutes early, so we couldn't pick up our registration materials and schedule.  Lincoln is such a tiny city!  It seems more like a suburb than a city.  Wednesday night, we watched a bass clarinet performance by Michael Lowenstern.  It was very interesting.  He used a looper and other fancy tech equipment in his performance.  The most striking thing he used during the performance was a instrument called an EWI.  It is a really crazy electric woodwind instrument.  It is straight like a soprano sax and played in front of the body where it is held on a neck strap.  It makes a really odd electronic sound. I didn't love it, but Mr. Lowenstern played it well.  I found his bass clarinet playing to be a little more to my liking, but he was able to achieve a sound that is very similar to the sound most people would expect from a saxophone.  I think it is exactly what contemporary bass clarinet performance probably should sound like, and he was very good, but I kind of love the more traditional music.  This wasn't my kind of music, but Mr. Lowenstern was very good at it and he had a really nice stage presence.  He was quite funny and enjoyable to watch.  I did like a composition he premiered called "10 Children's Pieces.  I thought the Lullaby movement quite beautiful.

IWWF 2012

Me and Wenzel Fuchs!

Last week, I attended the International Woodwind Festival 2012 - IWWF.  Jonathan Cohler was the Artistic and General Director and Cynthia Doggett was the Festival's Coordinator.  This festival was one of the best weeks of my life.  I met so many amazing clarinetists from Austria, China, Peru, Cuba, Mexico, Canada and all over the United States.

The festival included masterclasses, private lessons, and many performances.  I performed in masterclasses for Wenzel Fuchs, Jonathan Cohler and Jorge Montilla.  I had lessons with Cynthia Doggett, Jorge Montilla, and Yuan Gao.  They were all amazing clarinetists, and working with them increased the level of my playing enormously in a very short time.  The week had so many events to prepare for that I practiced 4-6 hours every day to be ready for all of those lessons and masterclasses.

The people there were all clarinet nerds.  Most of the conversations at the workshop were about clarinet playing, and it was glorious.  Everyone was incredibly nice, and I made a lot of good friends.  The festival was the largest concentration of clarinetists at a higher level than I have ever had the privilege of working with.  Watching the many masterclasses taught me so many things, and also inspired me to work as hard as I can to be as good as I can possibly be on the clarinet.

I feel that this workshop has inspired me, and taught me more things in a single week than anything else I've experienced in my musical pursuits.  The festival was an astonishing success.

International Clarinet Association High School Solo Competition

Today, I found out I made the finals of the ICA High School Solo Competition.  This competition is open to clarinetists who are 18 years old or younger all over the world.  The final round will take place during the first week in August in Lincoln, Nebraska at the ICA's Clarinetfest.

It’s Progress Anyway…

Now that it’s been more than 2000 hours of practice, let’s look to see if there has been any progress.  I only count practice room hours, not rehearsal time with my chamber groups or orchestras or any other ensemble.


This is a video of me in 2009 after a couple hundred hours of practice.

After a couple hundred hours of practice at age 12.

This is a video of me in late 2010 after 1000 hours of practice.

After 1000 hours at age 13.

This is a video of me in 2012 after 2000 hours of practice.

After 2000 hours at age 14.

So practicing is definitely helping, but I feel like I still have a long way to go.

Master Class with Jon Manasse

On Saturday, I played in a wonderful master class taught by Jon Manasse along with four other students:  Ryan Toher, Konrad Pawelek and Miguel Hernandez.  I thought Mr. Manasse was as good of a teacher as he is a performer.

I played second in the program on Weber's Concertino.  I started kind of tense, but after the beginning, I relaxed and played much better.  After I finished, Mr. Manasse asked how old I was.  When I told him 14, he said, "Wow!  I played that piece when I was fourteen."   He had a lot of good things to say about my playing, which made me feel a lot more comfortable -- I was really nervous.  He was an extremely nice and supportive teacher as well as being an informative one.

After that, we worked on tuning.  He first told me that there were 5 states of tuning:  in tune, sharp, flat, I don't know, and I don't care.  He said we could probably rule out "out don't care," and he had me play a tuning note with the piano.  He asked me if I thought I was sharp, flat, in tune, or I don't know.  I thought was out of tune, but I had to admit that I wasn't sure if I was sharp or flat.  Mr. Manasse said, it was good that I knew I wasn't in tune, and he said it was really hard for wind players to tell when they are a little off.  He said string players have an advantage, because they have to tune every time they play, so they have a lot of practice at hearing what it is to be sharp or flat, as they had to make adjustments every time.

He then asked me to play the beginning of my piece and told me to pay more attention and to adjust if it was out of tune.  Well, he told me that I tended to play a little sharp.  So he gave me some advice about how to work on tuning.  He said to put a tuner on a drone, and tune so you're really sharp.  Learn what it sounds like to be sharp.  Then, tune really flat, so you can be aware of what it sounds like to be really flat.  Then he said to work on different notes, and figure out what notes tend to be sharp or flat under differing conditions.

I liked the idea he had to learn how to recognize whether you are sharp or flat by playing sharp or flat on purpose in an exaggerated way to increase your awareness of your tuning.

Mr. Manasse was a really nice and informative teacher.  It was an amazing master class.  He gave me such good advice, and he did it in a way that made me feel good about my playing.  In fact, the theme of the master class was to remember why you play your instrument, to remember what you like about your playing, instead of taking a negative approach and focusing on what you don't like about your playing.  It's easy to get caught up in trying to perfect everything, and forget how much you love playing music.  I definitely do that sometimes!

Manasse Nakamazing Duo

Last Friday, I heard clarinetist, Jon Manasse, perform with pianist, Jon Nakamatsu at Northeastern University.  It was a breathtaking concert.  Both men are amazing musicians, and Mr. Manasse was really funny and entertaining when he spoke with the audience.

The first piece the duo played was the Brahms clarinet sonata.  This sonata is a gorgeous piece, and they played it beautifully.  Mr. Manasse's tone and expression were exquisite.  I think my favorite movement was the first, because Mr. Manasse conveyed a real sense of melancholy that was very moving.  One part of the performance that I particularly liked was Manasse's movement, which was very expressive.  Both musicians communicated really well, and they both seemed comfortable together.

After they played the Brahms, Mr. Manassee talked a little.  He spoke about the sonata, and he noted that a lot of composers seem to die after they write solo music for the clarinet.  Mozart, Brahms, and Poulenc, all apparently died after composing their famous clarinet pieces.  Mr. Manasse said he used to think that writing solo music for the clarinet must have killed them.  Although, he quickly noted that composing solo clarinet music now extends the lives of composers.

The last piece before intermission was a solo piano work by Chopin.  Mr. Nakamatsu was so technically proficient, but his phrasing and musicality were stunning.  I loved how he kept the sense of musicality even though the fast parts.

After the intermission, Mr. Manasse talked with the audience some more.  He was fun to listen to, and he started calling Mr. Nakamatsu "Nakamazing"  which I thought was pretty funny.  The first piece they played after intermission was Leonard Bernstein's Opus 1, his clarinet sonata.  This music has a few glissandos and I really liked how Mr. Manasse played them.

The last part of the concert was "Four Rags for Two Jons."  This was a really fun piece that Manasse and Nakamatsu performed astoundingly well.  It has a lot of parts which were meant for the audience to laugh at.  In many sections of the piece, the audience snaps with the soloists, and the pianist shouts things and stomps.  The end of the work is especially funny when the piano starts to play the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and the clarinet keeps playing the theme from the piece.

Afterwards, the audience kept calling for ovations, and Mr. Manasse finally went to the microphone and said, "Well, you asked for it!"  He then played an arrangement of "I've Got Rhythm" for clarinet and piano, which I just loved.  It was a great end to an amazing concert.