Alan Lucas - Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain

Autumn 2018 Volume 43, No 3

PHIL WOODSA unique legacy

Alan LucasPAYING TRIBUTE

Michael CollinsA YEAR IN THE LIFE

2 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018

EDITOR’S LETTER

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Chris Walters ([email protected])

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Cover: Phil Woods, 1978Photograph: Courtesy of Tom Marcello

Editor’s LETTER

Autumn 2018 Volume 43 Number 3 The official publication of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain (CASSGB)

www.cassgb.org

Welcome to the autumn issue of Clarinet & Saxophone. I would like to begin by paying tribute to Alan Lucas, the co-founder of CASSGB, who has died at the age of 98. Alan was a tireless advocate for the clarinet and also largely responsible for the shift among many UK professional players from Boosey & Hawkes instruments to Buffet. Turn to page 10 for a full tribute to him, including a detailed account of this fascinating period of clarinet history. This issue’s cover artist, Phil Woods, left a vast legacy of high-quality recordings on both instruments, though he was of course best known as a saxophonist. His career highlights are summarised by Kenneth Morris on page 14. I would like to thank Ken, who has been writing for Clarinet & Saxophone for 10 years now, for his colourful and expert writings on all things jazz and single reed. Talking of anniversaries, it is 20 years since the first synthetic reeds were produced by the Canadian company Légère. Whether or not you are a fan of the plastic, the company’s story is a fascinating one (page 42). It feels like a rich time to be writing about (or indeed playing or listening to) the saxophone. This year’s prestigious Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) competition was won by a classical saxophonist – and as Michael Pearce points out, the competition has a strong track record of showcasing the sax, with many past winners and finalists performing on this instrument. Read Michael’s interview with Jonathan Radford, the 2018 ROSL winner, on page 19. With Jess Gillam freshly signed to Decca, Rob Burton taking BBC Young Musician by storm and our reviews bag bulging with exciting saxophone CDs every month – for example, Saxophilia (reviews, page 44) – it seems that the classical saxophone is truly having its moment in the sun. Not that the clarinet is relinquishing its own spot in the limelight. On page 22 I interview the formidable clarinet soloist Michael Collins, who has just finished an ambitious period of recording what seems like virtually the entire clarinet repertoire on the Chandos label. It was a pleasure to speak to Michael, who has a had a challenging year to say the least, as you will discover when you read the article – although, thankfully, it hasn’t stopped him developing his parallel career as a conductor or continuing to break new ground as a clarinettist. Two articles in this issue are devoted to technical matters of very different kinds. Chuck Currie shares some invaluable advice on reed seasoning and adjusting on page 30, while we present some new findings on the mechanics of articulation on page 32. Have you ever wondered what’s going on scientifically when you articulate a note on the clarinet? If so, this article, which springs from a dedicated laboratory at the University of New South Wales, Australia, should offer some answers. Before I sign off, I’d like to remind you to sign up for CASSGB’s gala single reed day in Nottingham on 23 September. CASSGB’s days are always great fun, and this year there will be opportunities to play in massed ensembles and hear performances from top artists, as well as sampling our buzzing trade exhibition. See the news section (page 4) for more details, and I hope to see many of you there.

Chris Walters, [email protected]

28World Sax Congress, Zagreb, Croatia

SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

CONTENTS

Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018 3 www.cassgb.org

INSIDE4 News

13 Single Reed Doctor

44 Reviews 44 CDs

47 Sheet music

50 Diary

54 Membership update and classifieds

56 Inspirations Kenneth Morris profiles Christian Forshaw – saxophonist, composer and leader of The Sanctuary Ensemble

Regulars

14 Into the Woods Kenneth Morris examines the life and work of the American saxophonist Phil Woods, who left one of largest and most impressive recording legacies of any single-reeder

19 Jonathan Radford The channel-hopping saxophonist and reigning Royal Over-Seas League Gold Medallist tells Michael Pearce about the difference between French and British conservatoires’ approach to the classical saxophone

22 Michael Collins Chris Walters hears from the solo clarinettist and conductor about current projects and future ambitions amid a challenging year

25 ClarinetFest 2018 Stephanie Reeve reports from the International Clarinet Association’s annual flagship event

28 World Sax Congress David Zucchi visited this year’s World Sax Congress to perform with his quartet, The Domino Group. He reports here on the many other performances on offer there

30 Reed seasoning and adjusting Chuck Currie suggests that a little time spent on reed management pays dividends

32 Science of articulation Some recent scientific studies of clarinet tonguing are presented by the School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Australia

Features

36 Heather Roche Ian Mitchell profiles Heather Roche, a Canadian and now London-based clarinettist, blogger and contemporary music advocate

38 Film Noir Royal College of Music saxophone professor Kyle Horch writes about the birth of Film Noir, an ambitious new piece for sax octet by Ivor McGregor

41 P. Mauriat Clarinet & Saxophone is grateful to all our advertisers for their continued support. In this new feature, we shine a light on one of them in each issue, beginning with P. Mauriat

42 Redefining reeds This October marks the 20th anniversary of Légère Reeds. Michael Pearce hears from co-founder and president Mark Korschot about the company’s journey

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14Phil Woods

22Michael Collins

44Reviews – Saxophilia

19 56Jonathan Radford Christian Forshaw

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36Heather roche

Roeland Hendrikx

Jason Alder

Basilisk Duo

Naomi Sullivan

The Household Division

The Band of the Grenadier Guards

SUNDAY 23 SEPTEMBERNOTTINGHAM UNIVERSITY

Sarah Marinescu

Anna Hashimoto

CASSGB 2018 SINGLE REED DAY

NEWS

www.cassgb.org4 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018

Our international line-up of guest artists includes:

• Roeland Hendrikx, clarinet (sponsored by Henri Selmer Paris)• Naomi Sullivan, saxophone (sponsored by D’Addario)• Anna Hashimoto, clarinet (sponsored by Vandoren UK)• Nik Carter, saxophone (sponsored by Yamaha UK)• Jason Alder, contrabass clarinet• Marco Gerboni, saxophone• Basilisk Duo (Freya Chambers and Simeon Evans, bass clarinet/

saxophones)• British Clarinet Ensemble• The Band of the Grenadier Guards Clarinet Quartet• The Household Division Saxophone Ensemble• Warrant Officer Class 1 Sarah Marinescu of the Grenadier Guards

(massed single-reed session conductor)

After many months of planning, CASSGB’s 2018 Single Reed Day is now just a few days away. Building on the success of our 2016 event held in London, it will offer an opportunity to meet other CASSGB members, play together in massed sessions, browse and try out a wide range of products, attend masterclasses and talks, and hear performances from an exciting selection of up-and-coming and established artists.

CASSGB would like to thank our many supporters without whom the day would not be possible, including:

ABRSMBarnes and MullinsD’AddarioDevon & BurganiHummingbird and Maskarade Music PublishingRidenour Clarinet ProductsSelmer ParisSempre MusicTrevor JamesTrinity College LondonUebelUniversal EditionVandorenWeiner Urtext EditionWind BlowersYamahaYanagisawa


CASSGB is running a series of guest artist profiles on our Facebook page with more information about all our guest artists.

Along with our massed single-reed choir, we are pleased to announce that bass clarinet specialist Sarah Watts will lead a massed bass clarinet ensemble as a special UK tribute to Harry Sparnaay, the ‘godfather’ of the bass clarinet, who died last year. As with our massed single-reed choir, parts will be available on the day for players of all ages and abilities, so don’t forget to bring your instruments!

The event will take place at the Lakeside Arts Centre and Music Department, Nottingham University, NG7 2RD on Sunday 23 September from 10am to 8pm (registration opens at 9.30am). Tickets can be booked via our dedicated Eventbrite page (www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cassgb-2018-single-reed-day-tickets-46649060596) or by visiting www.cassgb.org and clicking through to information about the event. Tickets cost £10 for students, £35 for CASSGB members and £50 for non-members. The latter rate includes a free year’s membership of CASSGB for those who pay by direct debit.

legere.com/freedom

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Clarinet and Saxophone Society.pdf 1 2018-07-11 10:52:49 AM

NEWS


Royal Conservatoire of Scotland launches Clarinet Festival and Conservatoire Clarinet CompetitionOn Sunday 14 October, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) will host a new Conservatoire Clarinet Festival, featuring masterclasses, concerts and workshops for clarinettists of all ages and abilities. Sponsored by Buffet Crampon, the day will feature Buffet artists Nicolas Baleyrou and Maximiliano Martin, as well as RCS teaching staff John Cushing, Yann Ghiro, Lawrence Gill and Josef Pacewicz.

As part of the festival, the RCS has launched a new Conservatoire Clarinet Competition, sponsored by The Wind Section music shop. The competition is open to all young clarinettists of school age and pre-undergraduate study. After an initial video round, four finalists will be chosen to compete in the live final during the one-day festival. The first prize winner will be awarded a voucher from The Wind Section worth £2,000, which can be put towards the purchase of an instrument. A Most Promising Award will also be given to an applicant from the first round who shows potential for the future.

Please note that entries for this year’s competition closed on 30 August. The competition was advertised in early August on CASSGB’s regular email newsletter, which exists to provide members with news and information between the quarterly issues of Clarinet & Saxophone. Email [email protected] to be added to the email newsletter recipient list if you do not already receive it. The newsletter is free of charge and available to both members and non-members.

Tickets and more details about the festival can be found on the RCS website.

www.rcs.ac.uk

Testament published by SaxtetFollowing March’s world premiere of Testament, a concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra by Jeffery Wilson (see summer issue, page 36), Saxtet Publications have published the work in two formats: one with orchestral parts and the other with piano reduction.

Wilson said: ‘Having played the saxophone myself for over 45 years it seemed timely to pen a concerto for this most iconic instrument and to combine elements of improvisation with more formal compositional techniques. This is a musical language that has been forming over the years and now, I feel, is coming to fruition.’ A version for wind orchestra is due to be performed by Rob Buckland and the Royal Air Force Music Service later in 2018. Buckland gave the premiere performance and is the work’s dedicatee.

www.saxtetpublications.com

First RCM Yamaha Clarinet Prize winner announced Lewis Graham has won the inaugural Royal College of Music (RCM) Yamaha Clarinet Prize. The prize was open to RCM students in their second year of an undergraduate music degree who had been awarded a distinction in their first-year recitals. The competition was adjudicated by Geoff Parkin, clarinettist and director of arts at the Royal Over-Seas League.

RCM’s head of woodwind, Simon Channing, said: ‘We are so grateful to Yamaha for their generous sponsorship and for their support of the RCM woodwind faculty. The support comes just a month after Yamaha generously put on an absolutely fantastic class at the college demonstrating the acoustics and sound production of the clarinet.’

Yamaha’s Jeremy Smith said: ‘We are delighted to have partnered with the Royal of College of Music for this annual Yamaha Clarinet Prize. We look forward to continuing this partnership and supporting these talented individuals.’

Lewis Graham (left) with adjudicator Geoff Parkin

Rob Buckland and Jeffery Wilson

T H E S H A P E O F C L A S S I C A L

S A XO P H O N E T O C O M E .

Introducing the first classical alto saxophone mouthpiece from D’Addario Woodwinds. Precision milled, not molded, the D’Addario Reserve Alto Saxophone Mouthpiece is the most consistent ever made. Coupled with its unique oval inner chamber, you’ve got a mouthpiece that’s unmatched in response, flexibility, and projection.

R E I N V E N T I N G C R A F T S M A N S H I P F O R T H E 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y.

NEWS


This year’s EFG London Jazz Festival will run from Friday 16 November to Sunday 25 November. As usual, the Festival will encompass many prominent London venues, including the Barbican, the Southbank Centre, Cadogan Hall and Kings Place.

Single reed highlights are as follows. The Near East Quartet and Kyungso Park (the latter playing gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument) will perform on Monday 19 November at 7.45pm at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room. Featuring saxophonist/clarinettist Sungjae Son, the quartet released their self-titled album on ECM this summer. Meanwhile, Tim Garland’s Weather Walker Trio with cellist Abel Selaocoe will appear on Thursday 22 November at 8pm at Kings Place (Hall Two). Garland doubles on saxes, bass clarinet and flute and has played in Ronnie Scott’s band and more recently with Chick Corea, among many other projects. Weather Walker is his most recent album, available on Spotify to give an idea of his current stylistic direction.

Kings Place (Hall One) will host the Dave Brubeck Quartet on Wednesday 21 November at 7.30pm, featuring the saxophonist Dave O’Higgins. On Friday 16 November, in the same venue’s Hall Two, there will be a concert entitled Ethan Iverson Residency: Raising Hell with Henry Purcell. Featuring the sax players Cath Roberts and Dee Byrne, this event will see pianist and composer Ethan Iverson take inspiration from British music, from free improvisation to British jazz, Purcell and Constant Lambert. It is one of several Ethan Iverson residency concerts. And on Friday 23 November, British saxophonist Camilla George will perform at 7.45pm in the Purcell Room, presenting material from her second album The People Could Fly on Ubuntu Records. George has been called ‘the Golden Girl of Jazz’ by the Evening Standard.

The above represents only a selection of concerts featuring clarinet or saxophone, so be sure to visit the festival website for full listings and to book tickets.

efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

London Jazz Festival announced

Camilla George

Import Nederland BVBlaasinstrumenten


TRIBUTE

Alan Lucas, who has died aged 98, was one of the most influential people in the clarinet world in England during the second half of the 20th century. If you’re taking a break from playing your Buffet clarinet to read this magazine, you have Alan Lucas to thank to a large extent on both counts. He was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing Buffet clarinets so strongly to the attention of the clarinet fraternity here in England during the 1970s and was also the principal driving force in the formation of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain in the middle of that decade.

Anyone who visited the Buffet premises in Pages Walk, south east London in the 1970s will remember the friendly welcome from Alan and his team and the huge number of top-quality clarinets available to try. Technician John Coppen joined Alan along with a number of sales staff over the years, the most loyal being Martin Way.

The quality of the instruments was generally somewhat higher than the more traditional offerings from Boosey & Hawkes, where standards had fallen and complacency had set in. It was the perfect time for Alan to mount this strenuous and ultimately highly successful move into the English clarinet market. The nature of the sound of the Buffet clarinets was somewhat different to the B&H instruments players had been used to and, perhaps even more significantly, the balance of tuning was very different indeed, but there were so many advantages that players quickly found solutions to these problems. One of the first models to be taken on by professionals was the S1, which for some reason was perceived to be a large bore model but which in fact was not. It didn’t take long for players to gravitate towards the more usual R13 model.

The formation of Buffet Crampon UK came about following an approach to Alan from his old friend Martin Tolchin. Tolchin owned a business in New York, supplying instruments to schools. The Buffet outlet in New York had been liquidated so Tolchin had formed a trading group representing Buffet and Schreiber and asked Alan if he would represent Tolchin Instruments in the UK. Alan was happy to take up this offer and so, in around 1969 to

TRIBUTE: 1970, the business was initially set up in Alan’s home, but they soon took the well-known premises in Pages Walk as a home for the next 10 years.

Alan’s first approach was to the wholesalers, including B&H, suggesting that all the products could be offered together. B&H were standoffish. Dennis Gillard, head of the B&H musical instrument manufacturing division at Edgware, is said to have responded, ‘We don’t need Buffet. We possess the market for clarinets. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s ours, I wouldn’t waste your time, you’ll never take this from us, clarinets are our business.’ Alan also approached Bill Lewington, who had been making a strenuous effort over the years to counter the B&H dominance in clarinets, but even Bill said that he didn’t want to offend B&H and that in his opinion Alan would not succeed. So, Alan decided that the only way forward was to establish an independent retail business, at least initially. He first moved into schools, offering demonstrations for children on the understanding that he could

by Peter Eaton

ALAN LUCAS

TRIBUTE


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speak to the parents in the evening. He used other peripatetic clarinet teachers to work in the same way. One idea was to offer the schools what he called his ‘instant orchestra’, which proved very successful, although Alan put in many hours of work to establish it. He soon set up a successful rental business, where customers could hire an instrument for a few months and then return or purchase it. The Schreiber Evette clarinet was a bestseller, and they sold around 800 in their best year.

Alan went to see the leading clarinettists in the country at the time, Thea King and Jack McCaw among them. Jack was one of the few clarinettists who were playing Buffet clarinets anyway. John Fuest, principal clarinet of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, was also helpful to Alan. John felt particularly offended by the lack of support offered to him by B&H at Edgware. Paul Harvey and Steve Trier also did a lot to help, and Georgina Dobree was an early ‘capture’. Of course, there were substantial discounts available to these leading players, sometimes as much as 30%, and a few managed to get away without paying at all. Alan offered teachers 10% of the selling price of an instrument bought on their recommendation, and many people quickly jumped on that idea. The Evette & Schaeffer clarinet was a good student instrument, and it encouraged many to try the professional models, leading to many eminent players changing over to Buffet instruments.

Unfortunately, Martin Tolchin had overvalued his business in the past and was charged with fraudulence on the stock exchange. The group was broken up as a result, with Boosey & Hawkes buying Buffet in 1981, Alan being part of the package. Alan was never happy at B&H; there were aspects of jealousy, and his undoubtedly successful approach did not fit with the more established methods at B&H. I am personally aware of both sides of that argument.

In an attempt to persuade them of the considerable merits of his previous approach to marketing, in October 1984 he wrote a detailed document entitled ‘Buffet clarinets: a proposal for marketing in the UK, 1985’, which makes interesting reading. It was supposed to be confidential but Alan kindly let me have a copy. It was essentially an attempt to get the top management at B&H to take a similar approach to the one he had taken in the Pages Walk era, but his approach fell on deaf ears, even though sales levels had fallen following the takeover. Eventually B&H decided that they had some spare capacity in their pensions fund and offered Alan a pension.

I have two substantial personal reasons to thank Alan. Firstly, in the mid-1970s, I was keen to see what I could do in the field of clarinet mouthpieces. Alan took an interest in my mouthpiece work and gave me a box of old Buffet mouthpieces that he didn’t want, to experiment with. He had lots of them because then, if you bought a Buffet clarinet, the last thing you wanted was the mouthpiece. People just threw them away.

Secondly, he made a substantial contribution to my being able to purchase clarinet production equipment and parts from Boosey & Hawkes towards the end of 1985. I had been designing and producing clarinets in conjunction with Tony Ward and Derek Winterbourn since 1982 but was desperately keen to set up my own production. At this time, Hugo Schreiber was in overall control at Edgware. He was an old friend of Alan’s and that friendship ultimately paid dividends. I made contact directly with Mr Schreiber by telephone. Alan had spoken to him about me, and things moved very quickly from that point. It is easy to imagine a lesser man than Alan thinking, ‘We must keep all this B&H equipment away from Peter Eaton because there’s a danger he might do something with it.’ Thanks, Alan! n

CASSGB would like to offer our sincere thanks to Peter Eaton for this warm and personal tribute. We would be delighted to hear from anyone else with memories of Alan.

NEWS


BopFest is a jazz festival run by jazz musicians Nat Steele and Allison Neale. It features a week of some of the best British bebop and straight-ahead jazz, with a host of visiting US and European artists complementing the line-up. Now in its third year and supported by Arts Council England, its intimate central London venue offers cabaret style seating for 80 people. There is also a separate piano bar and restaurant for support acts. It runs at the same time as the London Jazz Festival.

Several saxophonists from the UK and further afield are appearing at this year’s festival, which also includes an improvisation workshop with tenorist Grant Stewart on the afternoon of Saturday 24 November (see below).

Each evening there is a duo performing in the restaurant at 7-7.50pm, and the main act starts at 8pm in the jazz club upstairs. One ticket covers both events. On Sunday 25 November the evening timings are 6-6.50pm and 7pm. Seating is first come first served, with tickets available via the website (www.bopfest.co.uk).

Monday 19 November features the Claus Raible/Herwig Gradischnig Quintet, plus support from the Will Arnold-Forster Duo (£14). The German pianist Claus Raible opens BopFest with a pan-European quintet co-hosted by Austrian tenor saxophonist Herwig Gradischnig, exploring the music of great bop pianist/composer Elmo Hope, with UK trumpeter Steve Fishwick, drummer Matt Home and bassist Giorgos Antoniou.

On Tuesday 20 November, the Rob Barron New Quintet performs, plus the Claus Raible and Giorgos Antoniou Duo (£14). Rooted in the bebop and hardbop tradition, UK pianist Rob Barron’s group focuses on fresh new arrangements of classic jazz, popular songs and original compositions, drawing influence from Cedar Walton and Wes Montgomery as well as from the current New York scene.

Wednesday 21 November sees the Osian Roberts Quartet, plus the Dave Chamberlain Duo (£14). Welsh Sonny Rollins-influenced tenor saxophonist Osian Roberts leads a quartet of UK straight-ahead and bebop musicians paying homage to his musical heroes, featuring Gabriel Latchin on piano, Jeremy Brown on bass and Matt Fishwick on drums.

Thursday 22 November features Allison Neale and the West Coast Quartet, plus the Luke Steele and Gabriel Latchin Duo (£14). Seattle-born alto saxophonist Allison Neale, influenced by Art Pepper and Paul Desmond, presents her quartet with a programme of West Coast and Cool School

jazz, with young New York pianist Alex Bryson, double bassist Dave Chamberlain and drummer Matt Fishwick.

On Friday 23 November, Artie Zaitz’s Organ Combo performs, plus the Mark Crooks and Graham Harvey Duo (£14). Young guitarist Artie Zaitz leads a Hammond organ-based combo paying homage to the late 50s and early 60s Blue Note recordings of Grant Green, with organist Ross Stanley, Steve Brown on drums and Dave Pattman on congas and percussion.

On Saturday 24 November at lunchtime, the jazz club features Ofer Landsberg quartet music (1-3pm, £14). Israeli guitarist Ofer Landsberg leads his new London quartet paying homage to the greats of the music, Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, with Alex Bryson on piano, Dario di Lecce on double bass and Matt Fishwick on drums.

On Saturday 24 November in the afternoon, the jazz club hosts Grant Stewart in a saxophone and improvisation workshop (4-6pm, £20). Visiting NYC tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart leads a saxophone and jazz improvisation workshop for amateur and professional players alike, for all instruments, bringing the latest jazz improvisation techniques from New York to London. With accompaniment from pianist Rob Barron.

Saturday 24 November’s evening event features the Grant Stewart Quartet, plus the Eriko Ishihara and Allison Neale Duo (£16). Visiting from NYC, tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, influenced by Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins, presents a hand-picked quartet of the UK straight-ahead jazz musicians, with Rob Barron on piano, Dave Chamberlain on bass and Matt Home on drums.

Sunday lunchtime on 25 November features Nat Steele with Grant Stewart (1-3pm, £16). UK vibraphonist Nat Steele, in collaboration with visiting NYC tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, plays his take on the classic 1950s Prestige album Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet with Gabriel Latchin, Dario di Lecce and Steve Brown.

Finally, on Sunday 25 November in the evening, Leon Greening will appear, plus support from the Dave Warren and Julian Bury Duo (note timings given above, £16). UK hard-bop pianist Leon Greening leads a sextet in a new project, celebrating the music of the great Art Blakey Sextet. Featuring Steve Fishwick, Osian Roberts, Joe Fenning, Adam King and Matt Home. n

www.bopfest.co.uk Instagram: @bopfest facebook.com/bopfest

BOPFEST JAZZ FESTIVAL19 to 25 November 2018 Toulouse Lautrec Jazz Club and Restaurant, London

Special report

by Chris Walters

Allison Neale

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SINGLE REED DOCTOR


Q: I have been playing clarinet for over 40 years but didn’t start until I was 25. My main problem occurs whenever I have to go from left hand C to D in the lower register. My third finger tenses up and I can’t play smoothly. I also experience aching in one of the two incisors that rest on the mouthpiece. I switched to double lip embouchure three years ago, which helped a lot, but this is tiring on the lips.

A: Thank you for your questions and I congratulate you on your enthusiasm for clarinet playing. Your problems are experienced and shared, to a greater or lesser degree, by many players, and I hope the following suggestions might help.

When fingers seem to refuse to behave as we wish, tension is almost always the reason. The third finger (ring finger) is a weak finger for many as it has less independence and flexibility than other fingers and moves in tandem with the ‘pinky’ finger for most motions. You have identified a situation where this finger must be smoothly lifted from a position of covering the tone hole after it has been engaged in sealing that same hole. It may be that you have used an excess of strength in closing the ‘C’ hole, or perhaps your wish to raise the finger at the appropriate time has introduced an awareness or anxiety, the result of which means you must overcome an unnecessary degree of muscle engagement just at the moment you wish to move your finger. In either case the retraining of the finger(s) to better control their action is going to be necessary. Avoidance of unnecessary tension is going to be your goal.

I recommend breaking down the motion of any troublesome finger action to its most basic movements and trying, for short periods of time, to lift and place the finger as lightly as possible. Start slowly and consciously to move the finger in both directions, placing down and lifting up (two distinctly different motions), all the while seeking to discover how little tension is actually required for adequate performance of this action. Such practice is often done using different rhythms with great benefit – for example, a semiquaver followed by a dotted quaver (short then long) and the reverse, a dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver

(long then short), always legato (not tongued) and with an emphasis on a light touch and smooth finger action. Ultimately the fingers should be able to do their job with far less effort.

It is worth noting that the change of pitch between C to D begins immediately once the finger has been lifted, while the change from D to C only happens once the finger is closed and back in position. This means that in order to perceive a smooth and even sounding transition between notes, the player is required to compensate for the acoustics

of the instrument with the action of the fingers. This principle applies to all finger or key actions, and there is a process of familiarisation to undergo in order to learn the action required. The practice of controlled trills and interval studies is excellent for this, with careful listening and constructive self-criticism. The likely result will be far greater

finger control and musical fluency once one returns to the challenging passages.

You also mentioned that you experience pain in your teeth from contact with the mouthpiece. You are not alone in this and, though a double lip embouchure may help to cushion your teeth, is does take a great deal of practice and commitment. In my opinion this degree of effort is only worthwhile if you desire the tonal difference and subtle control of nuance to be gained. You do stand to learn how to breathe and support your tone better, but at the cost of tired lips. A much simpler answer may be the use of a self-adhesive mouthpiece patch (many brands are available) to cushion and isolate the teeth from the hard surface of the mouthpiece and its vibration. You can even stack two patches if you need a greater degree of cushioning. Patches also help protect mouthpieces from scratching and wear by the teeth, so are well worth a try.

SINGLE REED DOCTOR

Our resident single reed doctor answers questions sent in by readers. Please send your questions – or further responses to advice given here – to [email protected]

Thomas Dryer-Beers is a former professional orchestral and jazz performer, lecturer and teacher on all members of the woodwind family. For over 20 years he has served as instrument sales manager for Woodwind and Reed, Cambridge (www.wwr.co.uk). Further thoughts on performance and related topics can be found on his blog – search online for ‘Blogspot Wind Player Advice’.

When fingers seem to refuse to behave as we wish, tension is almost always the reason

Kenneth Morris examines the life and work of the American saxophonist Phil Woods, who left one of largest and most impressive recording legacies of any single-reeder

‘Ladies and Gentlemen – may I present a magnificent master of mellifluous musicality, an extraordinarily exciting extrapolator of the Parker idiom, and a genuine genius at galvanising pop genres!’ While I am pretty confident that Phil Woods never put in an appearance at the Leeds Palace of Varieties, I’m quite sure that Leonard Sachs, the master of ceremonies, would have introduced him in a similar vein.

Philip Wells Woods was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on 2 November 1931 and died on 29 September 2015 aged 83 in East Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania from complications of emphysema. Without doubt one of the leading saxophonists of the generation that followed Charlie Parker, Phil combined an awesome technique with the ability to produce an endless supply of creative and accessible improvised solos, either based on standards, his own compositions

WOODSthe

Intoor arrangements, or even on rather-less-than-first-class themes from others. But even these splendid attributes were supplemented by an ability to deliver an attractive, individual and consistent sound and style across literally many hundreds of appearances as a leader or sideman. Indeed, your author gave up counting the number of albums Phil has appeared on – Wikipedia lists 80, and Spotify, YouTube and www.philwoods.com between them mention over 100 more!

Aged 12, Phil took up the alto saxophone, apparently after inheriting one, receiving initial lessons at a local music shop. With a natural ear for music and the ability to quickly master sight-reading, he must also have displayed an early proficiency on single-reed instrumentation as, during his

high school years and shortly thereafter, he received early instruction from the pianist-composer Lennie Tristano at the Manhattan School of Music. Later he was accepted into the Juilliard School where, on a four-year classical music course, he was obliged to major on the clarinet, there being

no curriculum at that time for saxophone. (Here we have a similarity between Phil and our own John Dankworth’s experience at the Royal Academy of Music – not the only similarity, in fact, as both men went on to work as performers, composers and arrangers in studios, on films, on pop albums and with groups of various sizes, at the same time carrying the flag for the ‘new’ bebop jazz style.) Phil’s first alto saxophone hero was Benny Carter, shortly after to be followed by Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker.

It would be no exaggeration to claim that he, almost, sprang fully formed as a world-class artist in 1954

PHIL WOODS

www.cassgb.org14 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018 PHOTO: BJØRN ERIK PEDERSEN

In his own words, Phil declared, ‘I am more a stylist than an innovator,’ but there can be no doubt that no other altoist transformed the Parker heritage so consistently into contemporary jazz as Phil did. The Swiss critic, Peter Ruedi, states in Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s The Jazz Book that ‘Phil [was] the most complete alto player in jazz [in 1972]’ with the editors adding: ‘His full, springing, triplet-based bop rhythmic sense is without equal’. How our man came to be such a remarkable and consistent stylist becomes clear as we unravel his musical career from the time of his graduation from Juilliard in 1952.

My sources indicate that Phil’s first professional work was probably with Charlie Barnet’s Band, a swing outfit, running just a little out of fashion by the early 50s. The first signs of his preference (and talent) for performance in a sax, trumpet and three-rhythm combo probably came to fruition with pianist George Wallinton’s quintet, featuring the trumpeter Kenny Dorham. In 1954, an association with the guitarist Jimmy Raney and the Prestige record company got Phil his first album, subsequently reissued as a two-part compilation titled Early Quintets (Original Jazz Classics). The earliest part of this session, recorded in August, contained Phil, John Wilson on trumpet, Jimmy on guitar plus Bill Crow on bass and Joe Morello on drums. While subsequent albums made by Phil as a small-group leader between 1954 and 1961 (Pot Pie, Bird Calls, Woodlore, Pairing Off, Altology, The Young Bloods, Four Altos, Phil and Quill, Bird Feathers, Warm Woods and Rights of Swing) show his technique and fluent solo improvisation to have marginally improved over those seven years, it would be no exaggeration to claim that he, almost, sprang fully formed as a world-class artist back in 1954. However, the early appearance of other extremely competent altoists Gene Quill (and Sahib Shihab and Hal Stein on Four Altos) on Phil’s early albums underscore that the source of his improvisational skill was his own ears. Phil always loved working with other fluent improvisers, be they guitarists, saxophonists, pianists, trumpeters or whatever. Their qualities, like those of his heroes, sparked his own.

It did Phil’s career no harm at all that he could sight-read band arrangements and double on clarinet and other reeds. Quincy Jones, as early as 1956, brought Phil on to a US State Department-sponsored tour with Dizzy Gillespie, with whom his further collaborations amounted to four albums through to 1990. Later work with Quincy lasted from 1959 to 65 over eight albums. Subsequently he recorded with many other composer-arrangers including Gil Evans (1964), Gary McFarland (1962), Oliver Nelson (1962-68), Michel Legrand (1958-82) and George Russell. My All Jazz Guide fails to give any of the records under Phil’s leadership less than three stars – and this article will attempt to cite as much as is practical of his five-star work. Also in the 60s, Phil worked with Benny Goodman, trumpeter Clark Terry and drummer Buddy Rich, filling any spare time with studio activity as a session musician (a

task he found rather boring) and as an educator (something he participated in for the rest of his life).

In an attempt to relieve boredom and build a new performance scene he relocated to Paris, France in March 1968 (with his bride from 1957, Chan Richardson – Charlie Parker’s partner from 1948

to 54) to lead his European Rhythm Machine. This was an attempt at avant-garde jazz which initially had George Gruntz on keyboards (subsequently the UK’s Gordon Beck) plus Henri Texier on bass and Daniel Humair on drums. Garnering hosts of commission work from European radio stations, the group lasted until 1972 when Phil returned to the USA, ultimately landing up in Pennsylvania where he founded, in 1973, his most artistically successful band: a quartet with pianist Mike Melillo, bassist Steve Gilmore and drummer Bill Goodwin. This unit with

occasional expansion to a quintet or sextet plus several important substitutions (in particular Jim McNeely/Hal Galper/Bill Charlap/Bill Mays on piano) and additions (Tom Harrell/Bryan Lynch on trumpet/flugel and trombonist Harold Crook) became Phil’s principal performance vehicle for the next 25 or so years. Early in the same period, Phil secured his first Grammy for the

The 80s finds Phil at the top of his game as a leader, guest soloist and educator with a regular international touring commitment

PHOTO: BJØRN ERIK PEDERSEN

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Your author gave up counting the number of albums Phil has appeared on

Phil Woods, 2007

PHIL WOODS


PHIL WOODS


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album Images with composer-conductor Michael Legrand (1975), a second for Live from the Showboat with his sextet (1977), a third for More Live (1982) and a fourth for At the Vanguard (1983). It is also worth noting that on a number of Phil’s albums from the late 70s onwards he substitutes a clarinet or soprano saxophone as his solo horn on selected tracks (eg 1988’s Evolution, with his Little Big Band, and Bop Stew, plus 2002’s American Songbook – these CDs are available on Concord or Avatar).

The 80s finds Phil at the top of his game as a leader, guest soloist and educator with a regular international touring commitment. I am indebted to John Fordham’s obituary of Phil, published in The Guardian in September 2015, for confirming that he helped found an annual Arts Festival in Delaware and coached student jazz bands around the world, including our own National Youth Jazz Orchestra. One of the first jazz educators to embrace the compact disc as a jazz improvisation tuition aid, his early 1980 book-disc combination was extremely helpful to me personally.

As mentioned earlier, the quantity of Phil’s recorded work still available is voluminous – and the good news is that it is quite difficult to find anything really substandard! Happily, much of his world-class (five-star) work can still be purchased or streamed (from Amazon or Spotify respectively) which, with a brief commentary, is listed below against the original record label. I’ve not been able to trace current sources for some of the best items – this does not mean that they are not available at all, just that my trawl was limited to UK sources and probably misses some retitled secondary or tertiary reissues. Additionally, there is much material logged under other leaders or supporting artists.

Here, then, is a short listening list to get you started:

• Rights of Swing (Candid, 1961). Early signs of Phil’s composing/arranging/soloing competence. Now on several Amazon reissue CD collections and on Spotify for streaming.

• Musique Du Bois (32 Jazz, 1974) – the European Rhythm Machine in fine form. On Amazon and Spotify.

• Phil Woods Quartets/Quintets 20th Anniversary Five-CD Limited Edition Set (Mosaic, 1976-92). Not traced.

• Phil Woods/Lew Tabackin (tenor sax) (Evidence, 1980). Great doubling on clarinet and flute by the saxists with fine backup from Jimmy Rowles/Michael Moore/Bill Goodwin. CD on Amazon.

• Birds of a Feather (Antilles, 1981). Hal Galper’s first recording with the Phil Woods Four with first-class, fiery solos from the leader. Not traced.

• Bop Stew and Evolution (Concord, 1987 and 1988). Quintet and Little Big Band, see above, on fine form. CDs on Amazon.

• Live at the Wigmore Hall (JMS, 1996). An incredible two-CD duet concert, just Phil and Geoff Beck. On Amazon (CD and MP3) and Spotify.

• The Rev and I (Blue Note, 1998). Spotify.

• Encontro (On Jobim) (Philology, 2001). Duet, just Phil on clarinet and Spanish guitarist Irio De Paula. Spotify.

At this point I should introduce the Italian Philology label, which is dedicated to our man. From 1991 to 2001 they issued 10 more CDs (Elsa, Just Friends, Porgy and Bess, Our Monk, Voce E Eu, The Solo Album, Balladeer Supreme, Woods plays D’Andrea, Woods Plays Woods and Dameronia. I believe this material to be important enough to warrant its own article.

As previously indicated, Phil Woods almost never got a bad review for his recorded work across all genres (and instruments) and chose his compatriots with skill. Very few single-reed players have projected such musicality and sparkle over such a long career with such consistence. A true master. n

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JONATHAN RADFORD


The channel-hopping saxophonist and reigning Royal Over-Seas League Gold Medallist tells Michael Pearce about the difference between French and British conservatoires’ approach to the classical saxophone, and his plans for future projects

When the first Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) Music Competition was held in 1952, violinist Robert Cooper took home the total grand prize of £10. Since then, it has grown into one of UK classical music’s most prestigious annual competitions, with a £75,000 prize fund shared among solo performers, accompanists and chamber ensembles, as well as recital opportunities for the winning musicians in major venues including London’s Wigmore Hall.

Open to UK and Commonwealth citizens under the age of 30, famous names to have reached the competition’s later stages include cellist Jacqueline du Pré, pianist Piers Lane, oboist Douglas Boyd and soprano Susan Bullock. Unlike many established classical music competitions, it also has a long history of showcasing the saxophone, with 10 former winners and finalists to date including John Harle (1980), Gerard McChrystal (1988), the Apollo Sax Quartet (1989), Sarah Markham (1995), Sarah Field (2000), Huw Wiggin (2014) and the Ferio Sax Quartet (2015).

Now it is Jonathan Radford’s time to shine. After first winning the wind and brass final, the 28-year-old saxophonist progressed to June’s Gold Medal final at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The 10-strong panel of adjudicators praised his ‘exceptional musicianship and emotive playing’ of works by Yoshimatsu, Turnage and Khachaturian, and he was crowned 2018 ROSL Gold Medal Winner, receiving £15,000 in prize money.

Originally from Suffolk, Radford first started learning the flute aged eight. ‘I was singing in a choir at school when a flautist came to play with us,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t fascinated so much by the music itself, but how the sound was produced, how the keys moved and just how a tube of metal could make such a great sound.’

Despite initial reservations about whether their son’s new interest would last, Radford’s parents eventually bought him a flute and he started lessons. Aged 11, he then had to take up a second instrument in order to apply for a music scholarship at his school, Thetford Grammar, which is when the saxophone entered the fray.

JonathanRADFORD

Although I really admire the French way of playing, I want to find some kind of a balance between the English and French styles and not be closed to one specific way of playing

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JONATHAN RADFORD

‘Each week, my teacher at the time brought along a different instrument for me to try out. He eventually brought in the saxophone. I really didn’t know much about it, but it just clicked straight away and so I started the saxophone lessons.’

Soon after, Radford successfully auditioned on both saxophone and flute for Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, with a career in music already in the 13-year-old’s sights.

‘My first teacher, who was an ex-military musician, was really generous with his time. We had our lessons on Sunday mornings and he’d literally stay all morning telling me about his experiences, the life of a musician and what it involved. All these stories really appealed to me and made me think of music as this kind of dream world and something I really wanted to do. So that’s what pushed me go and do it. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision, but more of a natural thing to do.’

From Chetham’s to Paris

During his time at Chetham’s, Radford studied saxophone with Andrew Wilson, who also happens to be the former teacher of 2014 ROSL Gold Medallist, Huw Wiggin. Every year, Radford and the Chetham’s saxophonists would make the short trip across town to the Royal Northern College of Music Saxophone Day, which one year featured Claude Delangle, a Paris Conservatoire professor, as a special guest. Inspired by the Frenchman’s playing, Radford started to look into other players around Europe and began taking private lessons with Dutchman Arno Bornkamp and French saxophonist Vincent David while still a pupil at Chetham’s.

After finishing school, Radford left Manchester to study in Paris full time. His ultimate goal was to study with Claude Delangle at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (more commonly known as the Paris Conservatoire). But with only 12 students allowed in the saxophone class at any one time, along with a notoriously competitive entrance ‘competition’, Radford first went to study with Vincent David in Versailles.

‘To get into the Paris Conservatoire you have to fit into a certain style – very much a French way of playing. You have to have a certain sound and a very high technical level. I was 18 when I went to Versailles and I didn’t speak any French, so it gave me the chance to both study the language and also the time I needed to prepare to get into the Paris Conservatoire.’

After four years in Versailles, Radford finally won a coveted place at the Paris Conservatoire. Four years later, he would graduate with masters degrees in both saxophone and chamber music with distinction – the latter as a member of the Yendo Saxophone Quartet, which he co-founded with fellow Paris Conservatoire students. From the outset, he always intended to return to the UK after his studies, and in September 2017, he began a Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, studying with the saxophonist Kyle Horch.

‘I always wanted to come back to the UK,’ says Radford. ‘Although I really admire the French way of playing, I want to find some kind of a balance between the English and French styles and not be closed to one specific way of playing. It is interesting that get into Paris I had to force myself to play in a way that perhaps wasn’t me 100%. But because I’ve made that move to copy something else, it’s almost easier to now come away from that and find my own voice.’

Beyond the aesthetic of sound, Radford also explains how the approach to studying vastly differs between the two countries. ‘Conservatoire life in France is very different. For example, you don’t study any doubling instruments or study much jazz either. You really just concentrate on classical playing. Every week, at least as undergraduates, we would have to prepare our studies, we would have our set pieces with piano and everything was very systematical. I think it’s

just the tradition of the place really. But if you’re studying saxophone in the UK, you’re not going to be so specialised in purely classical playing.

‘Also, in the UK you’re very much prepared for a life after your studies. They’re trying to make you as employable as possible. But in France, that’s less important. The primary focus is to play your instrument as well as you possibly can and then later think about what happens after.’

During his time in Paris, Radford premiered new works by composers Luis Naón (co-commissioned by Radio France), Betsy Jolas (commissioned by the Paris Conservatoire) and collaborated with IRCAM, a French institute founded to promote the interaction between scientific research, technological development and contemporary classical music.

As part of his studies at the RCM, Radford had to curate a project that would not only help his own career plans, but also contribute to the development of the community of the college. Always keen to promote new music, Radford arranged two large-scale concerts based around contemporary music for saxophone and mixed ensemble. Alongside premiering new works by RCM composers, he also showcased lesser-known existing repertoire including Webern’s Quartet for tenor sax, violin, clarinet and piano.

I’m just trying to perform as much as possible, take advantage of as many opportunities as I can and work towards a long-term sustainable future as a solo recitalist and chamber musician

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JONATHAN RADFORD


With an upper age limit of 30, many musicians repeatedly enter the ROSL competition over many years before making it to the final rounds. Although Radford had been thinking of entering for some time, he was in no rush to do so too early. In fact, it wasn’t until his pianist, Christina Zerafa, asked if he had considered entering and, if so, would they like to do it together, that he decided to finally give it a go. It turned out to be a good decision – Radford, accompanied by Zerafa throughout, won at the first attempt

‘I always try to go into competitions not expecting too much,’ he says. ‘Obviously, I try and be as prepared as I can be, play my best and enjoy it as much as possible, but never thinking that I’m going to win. So I was completely surprised when my name was called out in the wind and brass final and even more surprised when I won the Gold Medal.’

As part of the prize package, Radford also receives a £5,000 Gold Medal Scholarship administered and mentored by ROSL Arts. These funds can be spent flexibly on projects

to help support and build his career. One of his initial plans is to commission a new work for saxophone and piano.

Before the ROSL competition, Radford had already been named a Park Lane Group Artist, a Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artist with Making Music, and a Countess of Munster Musical Trust Recital Scheme Artist. Now with the ROSL Gold Medal stamp on his CV, he will

also receive numerous opportunities through ROSL Arts and their longstanding relationships with major venues and festivals throughout the UK and Commonwealth.

With an increasingly busy diary of recitals, what does the future hold? ‘I’m just trying to perform as much as possible, take advantage of as many opportunities as I can and work towards a

long-term sustainable future as a solo recitalist and chamber musician. I’m lucky enough at the moment to have a lot of help from various recital schemes, so it makes it easier to arrange your own recitals. But obviously when they come to an end, it’s going to be more difficult. So I’m trying to work on that and hopefully things will continue in the future.’

After a successful crowdfunding campaign, Radford and the Yendo Saxophone Quartet recently released their first CD, Utópico – described by Neil Crossley in the spring issue of Clarinet & Saxophone as ‘full of such uplifting, expressive, constantly shifting and evolving music that it makes the whole album feel alive.’ As for recording a solo CD, just like with the ROSL competition, Radford is biding his time.

‘I want to record something at a time when I feel I’m really ready. But more importantly, I want to have repertoire to record which I want to be able to defend and which resonates deeply with me. When I’m putting together concert programmes, I always like to have a theme or thread running through the programme that links everything together. If I were to record a CD, I’d also want a programme with a really strong, consistent idea. It would be easy just to put together a programme of French saxophone repertoire or something like that, which would still be interesting, but whether it would be a long-term project I’d be able to look back on and be proud of is something different.’ n

Jonathan Radford is a Vandoren UK artist and plays Selmer Series III saxophones.

www.jonathanradfordsaxophone.com@jonradfordsax

in the UK you’re very much prepared for a life after your studies. But in France, that’s less important. The primary focus is to play your instrument as well as you possibly can

JONATHAN’S ROSL PROGRAMME

Preliminary video round

• De Falla, Manuel: La Vida Breve, Danse Espagnole No 1 (1904-5) for alto saxophone and piano

• Lauba, Christian: Jungle (1992-4) for solo alto saxophone• Maurice, Paule: Tableaux de Provence (1948-55), ‘II. Cansoun per ma mio’

and ‘V. Lou Cabridan’.

Woodwind and brass semi-final

• Yoshimatsu, Takashi: Fuzzy Bird Sonata (1991) for alto sax and piano, ‘I. Run, bird’

• Turnage, Mark-Anthony: Two elegies framing a shout (1994) for soprano sax and piano, ‘II. Shout’ and ‘III. Elegy 2’

• De Rose, Peter: Deep Purple arr Wiedoeft for alto sax and piano (1933)

Woodwind and brass final

• Debussy, Claude: Rapsodie for alto sax and piano (1901-11)• Turnage, Mark-Anthony: Two elegies framing a shout (1994) for soprano

sax and piano, ‘I. Elegy’ • Khachaturian, Karen: Sonata for violin and piano op.1 (1947) arr for

soprano sax and piano, ‘III. Presto’

Gold Medal final

• Yoshimatsu, Takashi: Fuzzy Bird Sonata (1991) for alto sax and piano, ‘I. Run, bird’

• Turnage, Mark-Anthony: Two elegies framing a shout (1994) for soprano sax and piano, ‘I. Elegy’

• Khachaturian, Karen: Sonata for violin and piano op.1 (1947) arr for soprano sax and piano, ‘III. Presto’

ROSL and beyond

MICHAEL COLLINS


Chris Walters hears from the solo clarinettist and conductor Michael Collins about current projects and future ambitions amid a challenging year

Michael Collins is arguably the UK’s preeminent solo clarinettist and also a busy conductor, with a wealth of recordings, premieres and other musical accomplishments to his name. His representatives contacted Clarinet & Saxophone to tell us about what was scheduled to be his period instrument debut, playing the Mozart concerto with the Academy of Ancient Music. What follows is the conversation we had, which took an unexpected turn. Michael revealed that he had been suffering from cancer and had just been given the all clear after six gruelling months of chemotherapy – all without taking a break from performing and conducting. We also covered his many recordings for the Chandos label, his current projects, future ambitions, and thoughts on clarinet playing and music making in general.

CW Hi Michael, and many thanks for talking to us. I wanted to ask about the concert with the Academy of Ancient Music. Are you excited to be debuting on a period instrument?

MC Where do I start… I hope this doesn’t change things but I’m not going to be doing it. Well, I am probably going to be doing it, but just conducting. The fact is, a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s been quite a journey. I accepted the concert before I was diagnosed and of course I just put it on the back burner because exactly a year ago, on 1 July, I had a massive operation. They got rid of the cancer but then I had to have six months’ chemotherapy as well, which wasn’t a walk in the park. Anyway, I had my scans only yesterday and I’m 100% clear.

CW That’s wonderful news and I’m delighted to hear it.

MC It’s really odd you know, it hasn’t sunk in. Life is put on hold for a year because you don’t know if you’re going to survive or not. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the good news, so I did both! It’s a very strange feeling, like you’ve been given another chance. So I’m trying to look after

myself and I’ve made a few decisions. I’ve just got to pace it a bit. I’ve been living life in the fast lane and look where it got me.

I’m not going to slow down, I’m just going to be sensible in the sort of things that I do. To learn period instruments in the middle of playing the modern clarinet, all sorts of things – I’ve got to go to the Minnesota Orchestra to play the Adams concerto, I’ll be in Japan for five weeks coming up, I’m conducting as well… it’s just too much, trying to learn a new instrument with all its strange fingerings. So I’ll probably conduct in the concert, but it hasn’t been decided as yet.

CW How did the chemotherapy affect your schedule?

MC Do you know, I didn’t cancel one thing. Not one. I worked all the way through it. I had no problems about it. It’s because it’s part of my life in a way. After one chemotherapy session I got on the plane to Melbourne, I did eight concerts with the Melbourne Symphony playing and conducting, then came back and had another chemo session. It was the slotting them into my diary that was the problem!

MICHAEL COLLINS

I’ve never conformed to a school, I’ve never been bothered that it sounded like this or that person, I just want to be myself

PHOTO: BEN EALOVEGA

It was exhausting but I thought, I’m not going to give in to it. There were times when literally I had to ask someone to get me out of the chair, you’re that tired. But I thought, I’m going to get on and do it, and it was the best thing because then you find a different kind of energy which overrides this terrible feeling that you can’t do anything.

It affects people in different ways, and it’s how you let it affect you. They told me something very simple and that was to go and get a dog. Because it will force you out of the chair and that exercise will put the chemo on the back seat a little. It’s absolutely true – it’s worked a treat. So when you get that overwhelming feeling that you can’t move, you know you’ve got to take the dog for a walk, and then you kind of recharge some energy from somewhere.

CW I’m so happy to hear that you are on the mend and as committed as ever to your work. Perhaps we could discuss the recordings you’ve been doing for Chandos, which must be one of the most ambitious catalogues of clarinet recordings that has been done in recent years.

MC This latest disc, of Crusell clarinet concertos, has been CD of the month for Gramophone and has had all these five-star reviews which I was thrilled about. In fact I recorded it only about a week before I was diagnosed. I thought that was the reason I was tired, from recording all these wonderful pieces, and I was also conducting. It was really odd to know that this had come out, probably one of the best discs I’ve done, under those circumstances.

The funny thing is that I’ve done everything now with Chandos so it’s going to slow down a bit. I’ve done all the major and not so major repertoire. If I’m going to re-record stuff I did a while ago it would require a bit of thought about the right approach. So that’s exciting. Plus, with the conducting, that’s really gone off in another direction. I’m doing quite a lot of that now. I’ve been conducting the Philharmonia and the BBC Symphony – I’ve made a CD with them. I’m not cutting back on the clarinet, I’m just becoming more involved with conducting.

CW What’s driving you most at the moment?

MC In concerts I’m always looking for new pieces to play, new commissions. It’s always been an interest of mine to build up the repertoire a little. And starting from February next year I’ve got about 12 concerts at the Wigmore in one season. I’m playing all sorts of things – two clarinet-and-piano recitals, a clarinet trio, and I’m taking part in Stephen Hough’s residency there and playing all the chamber works of Brahms, including the quintet and the trio with Steven Isserlis. My residency will have things like the Schubert Octet, the Beethoven Septet… and that’s rather nice, to have this ongoing focus at Wigmore. I’m really excited about that. It will always feel a bit like home for me.

Then, I’m going to start a sort of artist-in-residence thing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And that will be conducting and playing. Or sometimes not playing, just conducting. It could be a piano concerto or violin concerto on the programme, or other times it might be Weber, Mozart, Nielsen, and I’ll play and direct myself.

CW How did you start with conducting?

MC I started off conducting chamber orchestra, and I was with the City of London Sinfonia for eight years. I’ve just left them actually, partly because my major plan is changing after this last year. Also it was restricting me from working with symphony orchestras in London, and I wanted to explore that repertoire. Since leaving I’m forging a relationship with the English Chamber Orchestra

and the London Mozart Players, in fact a very close one with the Mozart Players, which is great because they are on top form at the moment, playing so well. Over the eight years with the City of London Sinfonia I started off with the chamber orchestra repertoire and it’s just developed, one thing leads to another. You get invited to conduct a symphony orchestra and you go from there. For me that’s the path I never thought I’d go down, but it seems like a natural progression.

CW Do you have much time for teaching?

MC I try to slot in a masterclass or two when I travel because it’s always great to hear what’s going on with the clarinet around the world. Also I feel that I learn an awful lot, because in a masterclass you can bounce ideas and get ideas back, whereas with teaching one to one it’s more about going through all the ground work. So in a short sharp masterclass you can gain an awful lot.

CW Is there anything you’ve noticed about trends in clarinet playing from the masterclasses you’ve given recently?

MC I tell you what I’ve noticed, and maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it’s not so good. It’s that the technical aspect of clarinet playing has shot up. It doesn’t mean that pieces are played faster or more brilliantly, it’s just that the trickery side of playing, the use of circular breathing and double tonguing, has become a regular part of clarinet technique. And as much as I think there’s a time and place for it, they tend to use it an awful lot, for example in the slow movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto which is totally unnecessary. And just in some ordinary Weber or Mozart they start double tonguing, which again is totally unnecessary. My view, and I say this wherever I go, is build up the diaphragm and sustain a phrase. And build up your tongue muscle and be able to tongue fast with a single tongue. It’s possible. It’s like opting out, to find this easy quick fix to achieve the same effect. And in fact I don’t think it does achieve the same effect, that’s the point. With circular breathing you know when someone’s doing it, you can hear it in the phrase. And music needs to breathe. What’s the point of playing for five minutes without taking a breath?

MICHAEL COLLINS


In concerts I’m always looking for new pieces to play, new commissions. It’s always been an interest of mine to build up the repertoire

➡

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MICHAEL COLLINS


What is it that all these players have in common?

Jill Allen Freelance • Alan Asquith Freelance • Kevin Banks

Bournemouth Symph • Dan Bayley Freelance • John Bradbury BBC

Phil • Mandy Burvill Ex RLPO • Simon Butterworth BBC Scottish •

Rosa Campos Fernandez Hallé • Michael Collins Soloist • Nick Cox

Ex RLPO • Les Craven WNO • Barry Deacon BBC Scottish • Andrew

Dickinson Freelance • Stuart Eminson Freelance • Yan Giro BBC

Scottish • Oliver Janes CBSO • Liz Jordan Freelance • Mark Jordan Ex

BBC Phil • Kath Lacy RPO • Lynsey Marsh Ex Hallé • Sarah Masters

Freelance • Steve Morris Freelance • Jim Muirhead Hallé • Mark

O’Brien CBSO • Timothy Orpen Freelance • Jo Patton CBSO • Robert

Plane BBC Welsh • Colin Pownall BBC Phil • Lynn Racz M/cr Camerata

• Marianne Rawles Freelance • Daniel Rye WNO • Lenny Sayers BBC

Welsh • William Staff ord SCO • Chris Swann Freelance • Gavin Tate

Lovery Freelance • Massimo deTrollio Freelance • Tom Verity RLPO

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Particularly when many of us say that the clarinet is the nearest sound to the human voice. That’s part of music – breathing. It worries me that it’s reached this stage right around the globe.

CW What about styles of clarinet playing? Do you feel that those are changing?

MC I won’t mention any places or names but I was doing some masterclasses on the Mozart concerto, which I struggle with a bit because they usually turn up with the clarinet rather than the basset. I strongly believe that if you’re going to play it, try to get closer to the instrument it was written for. But that’s by the by. There were four of them in the class and they played it exactly the same, each and every one. It was identical and I was amazed. I said, this is incredible, I’ve never heard such a thing. I said, can

you please be yourself and play it how you want to play it. They said, we’ve been told to play it like this, because if we don’t play it like this in auditions we won’t get through to the next round. Even to the extent of their own musical personality being shoved under the carpet in order to conform. I thought, no wonder all the orchestras around the world – and they’re all wonderful – but they all sound the same now! Gone are the days when the Czech Philharmonic sounded worlds apart from the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s one international way of playing.

I’ve never conformed to a school, I’ve never been bothered that it sounded like this or that person, I just want to be myself. I’ve got my own ideas of what it should sound like and how it should go, and I’ll stick to that. Whether that’s close to the American style, British style, German style, I have no idea. And I just wish that young musicians could have some of that get up and go about them and not copy. Maybe that’s also because we listen to recordings that are perfect, and the sound is perfect, and we try to copy that way of playing which of course is never like it in real life.

CW Perhaps that links back to the conducting – a desire to influence things more broadly.

MC It’s exactly that. When I started conducting I had spent most of my life playing concertos and I was getting fed up of feeling that here’s yet another orchestra, another conductor and frankly they are more interested in the Mahler symphony in the second half. So the poor old clarinet concerto gets short changed. And of course, something like the Mozart Clarinet Concerto is far more difficult than Mahler’s fifth to bring off in terms of style, unanimous phrasing and so on. I thought, well, let’s cut out the middle man,

As a conductor it’s a two-way collaboration, therefore it’s give and take

I’ll do it myself. And that was really why I started this journey I suppose, and that’s how it’s grown.

I remember my time in the Philharmonia Orchestra. We had some really great conductors coming along all the time. We were doing Beethoven’s ninth with Guilini. I got to rehearsals at the Festival Hall quite early just to do my reeds, and he was looking round the platform to make sure all the chairs were in the right place. He came and sat next to me and said, Mr Collins, perhaps we can discuss how you want to shape the solo in the slow movement and where you’re going to breathe. To me, music is a two-way thing, and that’s the point. As a conductor I know I’m never going be the best technician but I do know that I’m one of them, that I feel and work with them on the same level. It’s a two-way collaboration, therefore it’s give and take. I would never dictate because I’m only too aware that people have their own limits. If a conductor told me to circular breathe, I might suggest that they find another clarinet player!

CW What’s on your conducting wish list?

MC I just want to be careful and choose the repertoire where I’ve got something to offer. There’s so many people doing their Beethoven symphonies and their Brahms symphonies and they imagine they’ve got the direct line with the composer. I don’t. I absolutely hold my hand up, I’ve got my own idea, whatever that is, and there are certain composers I feel closer to than others. I still feel very close to British music, very much so. I love Vaughan Williams, I love his symphonies, and I’d love to get my hands on those. I’ve done number five and I’d like to do more. So watch this space!

CW We certainly will, Michael, and thanks so much for talking to us. Once again, I’m delighted to hear that you are well. n

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CLARINETFEST


The small Belgian coastal town of Ostend played host to the International Clarinet Association ClarinetFest in July 2018. These huge events take years of planning, and following successful ClarinetFests in Ghent (1993) and Ostend (1999), Guido Six, director of Ostend’s ‘Conservatory at Sea’, wanted to bring the festival back to Ostend. Following the sad deaths of Six and his son Jef in a car accident earlier this year, the task was taken on by Eddie Vanoosthuyse, supported by members of Six’s family and a large team of volunteers. As well as gala performances, recitals, premieres, workshops, masterclasses and competitions, the ‘Guido Six International Clarinet Choir Festival’ was added.

With up to nine events taking place at any one time it was impossible to attend everything, so the focus here is on British artists and composers. Highlights from the gala concerts are also included if only to give a snapshot of a very busy festival and introduce a few names or works that readers may like to investigate further.

Recitals

Of the recitals, many included new works. Most of these concerts were held in the Kinepolis, one of three screens at the cinema. The dry acoustic provided an interesting listening experience, but performers, especially those with little rehearsal time, found it difficult.

Andrew Roberts gave a well-balanced and interesting mix of repertoire which included two world premieres on bass clarinet. Bill Connor’s bass clarinet

Stephanie Reeve reports from the International Clarinet Association’s annual flagship event

CLARINETFEST 2018

concerto Sciamachy ohne Schatten, accompanied by full wind orchestra, was premiered by Roberts in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall in June. For this concert, remarkably, it was rewritten with a completely new piano accompaniment – not an arrangement – and retitled Sciamachy... Schatten Suche. Roberts also played the work that inspired Connor to write his concerto, Bela Kovac’s Homage a M. de Falla. Graham Fitkin’s CUSP was commissioned and first performed by Roberts on clarinet in 1999 in Ostend, and Fitkin rearranged the work for bass clarinet for this event. All were well played, and Connor’s concerto was particularly appreciated by audience. There will be more on these projects in a future issue of Clarinet & Saxophone.

Sarah Watts and Jason Alder teamed up with Thomas Aber, Stefano Cardo, Stephan Vermeersch and Sauro Berti to perform a work thought to be the earliest for the line-up of two clarinets, alto, bass, contralto and contrabass. Dating from around 1900, Hymne a Sainte-Cecile by Daniel Bonteux is a lovely serene movement.

Sarah Watts was back later that day with pianist Anthony Clare, a partnership known as Duo Scaw, to perform three new works: Into the Depths by Elizabeth Kelly for contrabass clarinet and piano, plus Glitschig by Sohrab Uduman and Urban Myths by Joe Cutler performed on bass. Watts also joined Stephan Vermeersch (clarinet), and Jason Alder (contrabass) to play Donald Martino’s Triple Concerto for clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet

Concerts in the Thermae Palace included a sublime performance of the Brahms Quintet by Andrew Marriner and the Roman Quartet

Jason Alder

Andrew Roberts

Stefano Cardo

Duo Scaw

Ostend, Belgium

CLARINETFEST


with piano. The three clarinets seemed more like one instrument with a seven-octave range.

Also on bass clarinet the American player David Gould gave a concert of four new works, including one by British-born Peter Bannister. Three Songs Without Words After Franz Schubert comprised three lyrical movements interspersed with technical cadenza figures. At the other end of the range, Paul Vowles gave an excellent recital on E flat clarinet. Paul’s own works Iblis is a work of four short characterful movements, each depicting a scene from the tale of Lucifer. T&I by Francesca Le Lohé was also effective, based on Tristan

und Isolde. After a humorous and quirky piece by David Gurlington, Paul’s own Krebble Giant’s Dance, based on a Belgian Folk Song, was a fitting end to an assured performance.

Gala and guest artist concerts

Lunchtime and evening concerts were held at the Kursaal, a large concert hall, or the Thermae Palace Hotel, the main base for the festival. These 12 concerts used regional, national and military orchestras and bands from across Belgium, Luxembourg and France, all of whom provided excellent accompaniments to the huge range of new and often difficult works on the programme.

The Flemish Chamber Orchestra accompanied Peter Cigleris in a premiere performance of Peter Wishart’s Serenata Concertante, a work composed in 1947. Six contrasting movements began with a ‘Prelude’, and wonderfully sustained high notes set an atmospheric opening, with a lively ‘Rondino’ finishing the work. Jonathan Cohler’s new edition of the Mozart Concerto was a little over-embellished for some but aside from this was a carefully prepared performance.

Concertos for clarinet and band were mainly new works. Most memorable was

the sheer variety of orchestral colours achieved by composers. The Concerto by Marco Pütz was fun and entertaining with a filmic quality – Messiaen, but more easy listening. There was also a new work for clarinet choir and band: Roland Wiltgen’s Congress, which has four movements, ‘Procession’, ‘Allegretto’, ‘Intermezzo’ and ‘Scherzo-finale’. Each explores colourful and contrasting ways of the band collaborating with the choir. Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina was performed by Nicolas Baldeyrou in a very effective arrangement for clarinet and band, keeping the character of the original. Accompanied by the Royal Band of the Belgian Guides, this was extremely well performed.

Three gala concerts featured jazz soloists, including the Brussels Jazz Orchestra with five soloists. Stephane Chausse had a lovely fluid sound and fast mobility around instrument. Bass clarinettist Joris Roelofs had great versatility, performing a modern programme. Perennial favourite Eddie Daniels had another good mix of repertoire including Quietude, originally

for Buddy de Franco. Up-and-coming Norwegian clarinettist Felix Peikli is a name to watch out for – a fantastic player with a lovely sound and feel, whose Moonlight Serenade provided a beautiful interlude to his programme. Paquito d’Rivera stole the show with his brilliant playing, unique sound and amusing dialogue which included the revelation that ‘Wynton Marsalis once told me that Mozart was from New Orleans’ in the middle of a K622-inspired cadenza.

Giora Feidman on clarinet and bass clarinet with a quartet of violin, accordion, guitar and double bass performed some klezmer but with a mixture of spiritual, jazz and Latin pieces thrown in. As with Paquita d’Rivera, Feidman displayed an infectious love of the music as well as some phenomenal ensemble playing. Anat Cohen (clarinet) and Marcello Goncalves (seven-string guitar) were a brilliant duo in jazz and Brazilian music. Much of the programme featured Cohen’s own works, alongside other works from Brazilian composers.

The final Tuesday evening gala performance featured a large number or concertos, and here the highlight was Anthony McGill performing Copland

Peter Cigleris

Stephan Vermeersch

Barbara Borowicz

Felix Peikli

Giora Feidman

Stephane Chausse

CLARINETFEST


Concerts in the Thermae Palace included a sublime performance of the Brahms Quintet by Andrew Marriner and the Roman Quartet. Also, Michael Collins (see interview on page 22) played Debussy’s Première Rhapsody beautifully with the Garde républicaine band.

The final Tuesday evening gala performance featured a large number or concertos, and here the highlight was Anthony McGill performing Copland. The beautifully controlled opening was immensely tranquil, while the second movement was energetic and feisty. Sadly, balance was compromised in places by the large orchestra.

Clarinet Choir Festival

The British Clarinet Ensemble (BCE) was in attendance to give a performance as part of the clarinet choir festival. Of the 24 or so groups, most brought music from their own country, with the BCE playing Andy Scott’s Momento. Some BCE members stayed to hear groups from South America, Istanbul, Israel, Europe and North America. Many of these were amateur players and audiences were large and supportive.

The bass clarinet featured prominently, and Four Brothers were joined by 36 other bass clarinettists to perform a new work with five movements by five composers. The theme was the five elements, and the work featured some evocative moments and an interesting effect using foil over the bell.

A gala performance was given by the Festival Clarinet Choir conducted by Bert Picqueur. Eternity, by Picqueur, was a beautifully atmospheric work. The next two works were the last arrangements made by Guido Six. Widor’s Symphony No 6 used the clarinet choir to enhance the organ, but the organ overpowered the choir, at least from the back of the church. Symphony Concertante by Joseph Jongen was more effective and an enjoyable collaboration, offering good interplay between the choir and organ.

The festival was closed by the Belgian clarinet ensemble Claribel, whose players had been hard at work stewarding and directing players and audience throughout the week. Their performance featured the infectiously entertaining Joseph Balogh performing his own Clarinet Festival, with

movements entitled ‘Canzone’, ‘Cadenze’ and ‘Csardas Cromatiche’.

Masterclasses, lectures and trade stands

Of the masterclass leaders, Nick Cox and Michael Collins were both well received, each offering a different perspective on technique and performance. Some 24 lectures covered a range of subjects including a ‘Development of the Clarinet Choir’ talk which mentioned the UK’s Ionian Clarinet Choir (ICC). Presenter Dr Friedrich Pfatschbacher confirmed that not only is the ICC the oldest clarinet choir in Britain, but it is almost certainly the oldest in Europe, and was also the first European clarinet choir to make a recording in 1974. In the audience was Ian Rogers, current conductor of the ICC!

The large trade exhibition offered the chance to view and test all the latest developments in clarinet instruments and accessories. Publishers offered huge ranges of music with many new works available for sale, and it was good to see Lancashire-based Forton Music’s Rob Rainford and Lynn Williams with a well-stocked stand.

And finally...

The final day was at the Thermae Palace and included an excellent performance of Stockhausen’s In Freundschaft given by Barbara Borowicz and a lively jazz masterclass with Paquito d’Rivera. Those who stayed right to the end were rewarded with a show by Les Bons Becs. Led by Florent Heau, this quintet of clarinets and percussionist gave a unique performance that can best be described as the single-reed equivalent of Stomp, only with more slapstick, brilliant arrangements and some astonishing technique. All were captivated by the show and I feel there will be strong calls to bring them to the UK.

Events of this size naturally present logistical concerns but there were a few problems that could have been dealt

with. Many solo recitals were given in the Kinepolis cinema, which presented enormous problems for some. Most players are adaptable to circumstances, but to be expected to play in a venue akin to an anechoic chamber was unreasonable. Audiences were often very small in this venue, and many excellent presentations were heard only by a handful of people. This was partly due to the sheer number of events and also the layout of the venues which were spread out across the town. Perhaps the bigger issue of the sheer number of events can be addressed in future festivals, but in wanting to give as many players as possible the chance to perform, this may be a difficult compromise to reach. The quality of performance was on the whole very good, and even the performances that took clarinet playing to new extremes, not always to the taste of everyone, deserved the opportunity to be tried and tested. The next two festivals will be in the USA – see www.ica.org for more information. n

With thanks for their contributions to Jane Bagot, Stephen Bagot, Keith Bowen, Colin Bridge, Helen Kendrick, John Kendrick, John Mackenzie, Ian Mitchell, Andrew Roberts, Ian Rogers, Andrew Smith and Sarah Watts.

David Gould

The British Clarinet Ensemble

Eddie Daniels

Joris Roelofs

WORLD SAX CONGRESS


Once every three years, an unwitting city finds itself the centre of the saxophone world for a week. Whether one attends the World Sax Congress (WSC) to premiere a new work, gain international performance experience, network with other saxophonists, or simply witness an enormous quantity of performances, each congress has an vast amount to offer.

Without a doubt, this year’s congress in Zagreb, Croatia was an outstanding success. The UK saxophone contingent was out in full force, ready to uphold their honour whatever the outcome of the World Cup. While solo performances from well-established artists were perhaps not as numerous as from other countries, emerging talent was to be found in spades. Standout performances from various groups included the Birmingham Saxophone Octet led by Naomi Sullivan and the quartets Kaleidoscope, Marici and Momentum, among others. Individual talent was also on display, and UK saxophonists showed a dizzying array of talent in a wide variety of genres, from the saxophone-and-electronics performances of Thomas Plater and Alistair Penman to Emma McPhilemy’s exceptional recital with the American

WORLD SAX CONGRESS

pianist Hannah Creviston. Also in this category were Gillian Blair’s performances with harpist Elinor Nicholson and many more that time unfortunately did not permit me to attend.

Personal highlights began with the gala concert on the first night. While programming four saxophone concertos

in a single concert is not without its risks, each work was sufficiently distinct and, perhaps more importantly, each performer had such a wildly different sound concept that one wondered sometimes whether they were even playing the same instrument. The winner of the 2017 Josip Nochta Saxophone Competition, Antonio Garcia-Jorge, opened with a concerto by the Croatian composer Boris Papandopulo (1906-1991). Though I was unfamiliar with this, I was pleased to hear a more traditionally conceived work so wonderfully performed, and I hope it will work its way into the repertory before long. This was followed by Claude Delangle’s performance of Philippe

Leroux’s L’unique trait de Pinceau, for soprano and baritone saxophones. Leroux (b. 1954) has written extensively for the saxophone, and his fluency with the technical capabilities of the instrument was clear. The inventive use of extended techniques, without ever resorting to their cheap deployment, was a highlight

for me, and the extraordinary technical challenges of the work were executed flawlessly by Delangle.

Arno Bornkamp’s premiere of Guillermo Lago’s Leyendas was

everything that fans of this virtuoso could have hoped for. Lago (the nom-de-plume of saxophonist Willem van Merwijk) achieved significant success as the baritone player of the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, and in recent years has turned his talents to composition. I can hardly imagine a concerto written with the performer so clearly in mind, and Bornkamp’s brilliant sound soared over the orchestra and effortlessly filled the hall.

The final performance of the night was by the American saxophonist Timothy McAllister. It was a delight to hear John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto for the first time in person, having heard McAllister’s recording of the work so many times.

David Zucchi visited this year’s World Sax Congress to perform with his quartet, The Domino Group. He reports here on the many other performances on offer at the event

It was a delight to hear John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto for the first time in person, having heard Timothy McAllister’s recording of the work so many times

Gradec in Zagreb, Croatia

WORLD SAX CONGRESS


The performance did not disappoint, and dozens of international performances of this work with major orchestras have clearly left McAllister with a command that few others can match.

The second highlight for me occurred the following day, where the two major draws were the Prism Saxophone Quartet and the Selmer Showcase. The former presented a flawlessly prepared programme of new American works and William Bolcom’s arrangement of Robert Schumann piano pieces. The latter was a revolving door of extraordinary talent, from emerging chamber groups to some of the most well-established figures of the saxophone world – classical and jazz alike.

An additional highlight was the performance by the Yendo Quartet, a Paris-based quartet featuring the UK’s own Jonathan Radford (see interview on page 19), who delivered a stunning rendition of quartets by Grieg and Debussy. Whatever one’s thoughts are on saxophone quartet transcriptions of string quartets, this quartet’s clear conception of the possibilities of phrasing and colour elevated their performance from what could have been a simple demonstration of saxophone technique to a brilliant interpretation of two chamber masterpieces.

While jazz saxophonists were on the whole less represented, there was still a good deal on offer. Most notable was the Thursday night concert by the Jazz Orchestra of Croatian National Television, which featured soloists Attilio Berni, Rosario Giuliani, Victor Gaines, Perico Sambeat, Krzysztof Urbanski and Branford Marsalis. As in the concerto gala concert, the risk of programming inertia was thankfully avoided by having six saxophonists of extraordinary ability and distinction with clearly established musical identities – and of course the humorous addition of extended sub-contrabass and soprillo saxophone solos.

There were, as ever, many eccentric appearances, the most sensational of which was surely the Tokyo Rock‘n Sax, whose head-banging, full-throated metal and Queen covers entertained audiences on two separate occasions. I am not embarrassed to say that I enjoyed this group immensely, though perhaps by day four of my first ever World Saxophone Congress I may just have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome.

Another wonderful feature of the congress was the abundance of booths with the latest instruments, gadgets and toys on display – saxophones of every size and scope, accessories and 3D printed mouthpieces. It was all rather tantalising, though I wonder how the booths ultimately fared when one accounts for the well-known lack of liquid assets possessed by most musicians. In any case, my birthday and holiday wish lists are more or less sorted for years to come.

Saxophonic matters aside, Zagreb itself was a delight. We enjoyed well-priced food and drinks, friendly shop owners, beautiful architecture and cultural curiosities that would be worth a return visit (the Museum of Broken Relationships,

for one). The Zagreb Academy of Music is a gem of an institution, wonderfully equipped with state-of-the-art facilities. It was a perfect place to host the bulk of activities.

On the whole I was immensely inspired by my time in Zagreb. I was amazed at how inclusive and supportive an atmosphere had been created by the organisers, and would highly recommend attending. I look forward to seeing you in Kurashiki City, Japan, for the next one in 2021! n

There were, as ever, many eccentric appearances, the most sensational of which was surely the Tokyo Rock‘n Sax

Gillian Blair

Timothy McAllister

Thomas Plater

Tokyo Rock‘n Sax

Kaleidoscope

MariciAlistair Penman

Prism Saxophone Quartet

Yendo Quartet

CHUCK CURRIE


Reed seasoning and adjusting

Chuck Currie suggests that a little time spent on reed management

pays dividends

I am frequently surprised at how many fine players say they only get 20% performance-quality reeds out of a box. I get 80%, and even the best reeds are better with adjustments. This takes up to 10% of your practice time but is well worth it. It just makes achieving musicality easier! There is some art to it, but it is mostly science. All too few students are taught to maximise the potential of their equipment and their ability to achieve nuanced musicality with ease.

Equipment

1. Glass plate, 3/8” thick, 3.75” x 7”. The best place to get this is at an auto glass repair shop. Make sure they polish the edges so you can’t cut yourself! If you want something really flat and really heavy, buy the Granite Surface Plate from Lee Valley Hardware (www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=32526&). 2. ReedGeek. Available at good music retailers or direct from www.reedgeek.com – for flattening the reed table and all adjustments to the surface of the reed. This relatively new product is revolutionary and indispensable. There are also fine tutorials available at the ReedGeek site.

3. Sandpaper. 600 grit from any hardware store. The very best is 3,200 and 6,000 Micromesh, available online (www.internationalviolin.com/Shop/micro-mesh-sandpaper-steel-wool/micro-mesh-sheets-pads).

4. Reed trimmer for each size of reed. The Cordier model is the best-known standard clipper, but you need to try them out to ensure they cut cleanly, and they need to be replaced every few years. Vandoren makes superb trimmers designed to duplicate their own tip cutting for specific models of their alto saxophone and soprano clarinet reeds.

Reed care and seasoning

Purchase reeds on the slightly hard side and adjust them from there, rather than clipping, which can affect the balance. In my opinion, all adjusting works better on ‘thick blank’ reeds with conical profiles.

There is just more ‘meat’ to work with. With extremely thick blank reeds bought a little on the hard side, this comes very close to actually making your own reeds. It is a little more work than adjusting standard blank reeds but produces fantastic results. The most conical reed made of premium seasoned cane that is the thickest blank at heel, heart and tip is the Vandoren V21. Soak new reeds a few minutes in water. I don’t recommend wetting reeds in the mouth. Saliva exists to break down organic material… which is exactly what cane is!

Play the new reeds for five minutes, not above mf – a terrific time to work on your long tones! Dry out the table and then check it for warping by placing the ReedGeek on the back at an angle and moving it slowly up and down the length of the table, looking between the ReedGeek and the table at a bright light. Many reeds are convex or concave on the back and will not seal to the mouthpiece table. The larger the reed, the more of them are warped – from about 25% of soprano clarinet reeds to over 50% of bass clarinet, tenor sax or baritone sax reeds. Here is a picture of a reed with convex warpage. Scrape as in the diagram and picture to flatten.

Pull20 degrees

20 degreesPush

You can be quite aggressive! Note how much ‘reed dust’ accumulates.

Next, the initial sanding. Place the sandpaper on the 3/8” glass plate (or

granite plate). I have this in my gig bag, along with sandpaper, reed clippers and a ReedGeek. Place the reed table down directly on the granite or glass and press much of the water out with your thumb, pushing from the stock up to the tip. Sand the face of the reed extremely lightly too, just for the comfort of having very smooth cane on the bottom lip – not enough to change the acoustics.

Sand the table of the reeds over 3,200 Micromesh, followed by 6,000 Micromesh sandpaper. This is an abrasive that was developed for polishing commercial aircraft windows! 600 grit commercial wet/dry sandpaper from a hardware store works well, but I’m a fanatic. If you finish with 6,000 Micromesh, the table of your reed will be as smooth as glass.

Most results come from the first sanding, but each time the reed is soaked, just a little more fibre comes up in the table, so repeat this process (except for the ‘face’ sanding) the next two times you season the reed. It is now about 80% seasoned and just needs to be played a few more days to be performance ready. This gives an incredibly smooth reed table that seats well on the mouthpiece and seals the

CHUCK CURRIE


reed to the rails and tip of the mouthpiece when vibrating, improving articulation and tone. It takes about a week of playing five minutes per day for the reed to have a polished ringing sound.

Reeds must be kept at playing humidity. I recommend Vandoren Hygro Reed Cases for this. They hold reeds in great condition with a sponge that provides humidity when moistened and are the only cases that leave the table of the reed quite open to humidified air. The reeds never develop mould because there are holes that allow air movement.

When the reeds are two to three weeks

old they are at their absolute best, if played for approximately an hour per day. At about three to four weeks, the table gets a little rough and ‘pulpy’ and may require one more sanding. If the table feels rough at any point, give the reed about three passes with sandpaper again. At four to five weeks, the reeds are still comfy and expressive, but can start to get ‘flabby’. At this point, a great reed can sometimes be brought back by clipping the tip by about 0.25mm. This doesn’t always work but is worth a try, and the reed can be improved a bit in response after this by scraping it extremely lightly from 1mm below the tip up to the beginning of the heart with the ReedGeek. However, this is the beginning of the end for the reed, and it is no longer suitable for performance, only practice. Another week or so and it is a goner.

Reed adjusting

Most of this is done over the first three days of seasoning. Then the reed is ready for its final polishing and adjusting.

1. Warped table. We have to repeat this every few days during the seasoning process and check weekly when the reed is in playing rotation. The reed will keep changing with usage and weather, so we are not done with this after the initial seasoning. The following balancing also continues from time to time, usually very slightly, during the reed’s performance life.

2. Side to side balance. This is the single most common issue with reeds. 75% of reeds need balancing and if you are not already doing this, it will change your life. To test for balance issues, place the reed

on the mouthpiece on the instrument. Take a little less mouthpiece than normal into your embouchure and turn the mouthpiece clockwise about 30 degrees, so that your embouchure only controls the right side, with the left side of the reed free. This will dampen the right side of the reed so you can test the left side. Blow an open C sharp (sax) or G (clarinet). Blow a good solid sfz ff without tonguing, followed by a long diminuendo al niente. Do the same thing on the other side, rotating the mouthpiece so that the right side is free. The initial resistance and the progressive lack of response as you diminuendo will inform you which side is ‘stuffier’. If the ‘free’ side (left or right) seems stuffy compared to the other, some cane should be removed from that side. Scrape around the heart and up to the centre of the tip of the stuffier side. Here is the area to scrape if the right side is more resistant, and how to angle the ReedGeek.

Note that we are avoiding the centre or ‘heart’ of the reed, as well as the last millimetre of the tip. Leave these areas alone to ensure full resonance as well as clear articulation.

3. Middle register response areas. Usually these areas are adjusted pretty well by the time we have adjusted the side to side balance. However, if a reed feels too resistant in all registers, scrape above the top and around the sides of the ‘heart’ shown above.

4. Low end response. Tongue repetitive staccato notes on the bottom four notes of the instrument. See how responsive they are. If they are dull, stuffy or just do not resonate nicely, scrape the bottom 1/8” to 1/2” of the reed just above the bark. The less responsive the notes are as you move up from the bottom notes, the higher you have to scrape, but just up to the centre. Scraping all the way from the bark up to the centre point of the reed improves response and resonance over the entire instrument. Note that we are still avoiding the heart of the reed.

5. High end response and ease of register change. Tongue pp repetitively on A above the staff and higher to check articulation response. At the same time, check response to register changes by slurring up and down from C below the staff to G above the staff and up to altissimo high E on clarinet. These are all the same fingerings except for the thumb vent key and the first finger venting for the high E, so it is easy to test the response through the registers this way. On saxophone, slur between D below the staff, D in the middle of the staff and then high D with the palm key to test register changes. These tests will tell you if you need to work on the tip of the reed in the centre from 1mm from the very tip, down to 3mm below the tip.

To adjust for ease of articulation and register changes, you can scrape this area with the side of the ReedGeek.

However, the ‘bullnose’ of the ReedGeek is the sharpest and most precise part of the tool, so it can be ideal for this purpose for fine tuning.

That’s all there is to it! If you are willing to commit to this, within a few weeks you will triple or quadruple your percentage of performance reeds, at the expense of about 10% of your practice time. Even better, your standard of what a performance reed can do for your tone and articulation will increase exponentially. At first, you will ruin the odd reed, but that’s how you learn – and they won’t have been performance reeds anyway. n

SCIENCE OF ARTICULATION



The clarinet has been studied scientifically in more detail than any other wind instrument, and much is well understood. Our lab has a website explaining music acoustics, including our own contributions on clarinets and saxophones, especially on the frequency response of instruments, on how pitch, loudness and timbre are related to blowing pressure, lip force and vocal tract properties, and on the use of the vocal tract on altissimo notes, pitch bending, bugling and multiphonics. Most studies, however, have concentrated on steady notes. The start and end of notes (collectively called transients) are important to the quality of the sound and the elegance of the performance. Several students and staff in our lab have worked on transients over the last few years, which explains the number of authors listed for this brief report, which aims to explain some of our recent results in simple language.

Two studies involved experts and students playing modified clarinets. These had sensors to measure blowing pressure and sound in the player’s mouth and microphones in the barrel and bell. In one study, a sensor on the reed measured tongue contact. In the other, an endoscope inside the mouth recorded high-speed video of tongue and reed motion.

Two additional studies used an automated clarinet playing system. We hasten to say that this machine is not intended to replace musicians. Rather, it

provides us with a tireless, reproducible, experimental subject, which has exactly and independently controlled blowing pressure, lip force and position, tongue force and acceleration. It also has a transparent mouth, in which we can drill holes without asking the university ethics committee. You can hear it play on our website. The site also has the scientific reports of our research, so we omit the technical details and most of the results in this brief account.

Figure 1 shows results for the low E on a B flat clarinet (D3 concert, 147 Hz) tongued normally. The mouth pressure and barrel pressure are shown in kilopascals (kPa); one kPa is 1% of atmospheric pressure (or about 0.15 psi for Americans). The change in pressure in the air near the bell is much smaller and shown in pascals. At the right of the curves, we notice also that the sound wave at the bell has a more interesting shape than that inside the instrument. This is because the bell

By Weicong Li, André Almeida, Lauren Inwood, John Smith and Joe Wolfe (School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Australia)

Some recent scientific studies of clarinet tonguing

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Figure 1: Three frames from the high-speed endoscope video as a clarinettist tongues low E (below). The images correspond to the times labelled a, b and c on the top graph, which shows the reed’s displacement from its initial position. The graphs above show the pressure in the player’s mouth, the sound pressure in the barrel, then the sound outside the bell (from Inwood et al., 2016).



radiates higher harmonics better than the fundamental, whereas the sound inside is dominated to a great extent by the fundamental.

Initially, the reed is pushed towards the mouthpiece by the tongue (frame (a) from the high-speed video) and the graphs begin as the reed begins to move. For about 0.02s, the reed stays in contact with the wet tongue, which pulls the reed beyond its point of mechanical equilibrium. (If you exaggerate your tonguing – a bit like slap tonguing – you can probably feel the tongue pulling the reed.)

At (b), the reed’s springiness has pulled it away from the tongue and it begins to return to its mechanical equilibrium position (c): its rest position for this blowing pressure and lip force. Tongue and reed have no further contact during the note except in the case of staccato, when the tongue touches and immobilises the reed to begin the final transient.

The reed is stiff and light. So, if there were no lip, it would return to equilibrium, overshoot and proceed to oscillate at its own resonance frequency of a few thousand vibrations per second. But the lip slows the reed’s motion and also has mechanical losses. These effects discourage the reed from vibrating at high frequencies — occasional squeaks excepted. So, because of tongue and lip, the motion (a–c) is much slower than the natural vibration of the reed. At (c), the reed has lost the mechanical energy initially provided by the tongue: from here on it will be driven only by the sound wave in the bore.

As in most examples we recorded, the blowing pressure in Figure 1 gradually increases throughout the attack. Here, it is about 1kPa above atmospheric when the reed starts to move. When the note starts, the blowing pressure is about 2kPa. Consequently, as the reed moves away from the mouthpiece (a–b) and back towards it (b–c), the aperture into the mouthpiece correspondingly increases and decreases, producing a sudden increase then decrease in airflow. These changes in flow produce a small increase then decrease in pressure in the mouthpiece. One of our technical papers explains these changes and gives experimental measurements of them: the physics of the process is somewhat similar to the ‘water hammer’ that one hears sometimes in old plumbing. For now, just note that the early changes in the pressure are tiny and, on this scale, only just visible on the graph before 0.03 s.

The change in pressure travels down the bore at the speed of sound: 340 metres per second. (Why this speed?

Because a travelling variation in pressure is a sound wave.) When this sudden change in pressure reaches the bell, it is reflected and returns, and when it reaches the reed it is reflected again (more

about reflections and resonances on our website). In practice, this is complicated because, especially for high notes, the reflected wave returns while the tongue is still moving with the reed. So one of our experiments used a normal mouthpiece

and a three-metre long ‘clarinet’ (a plastic tube) while we worked on understanding and quantifying transients.

Over a tenth of a second or so, these reflecting waves grow in size, due to

amplification by the reed and the player’s breath. Let’s see why. Imagine a sudden increase in pressure in the bore arriving at the reed. It pushes the reed away from the mouthpiece, which increases slightly the aperture between reed and mouthpiece. This increased aperture allows slightly more air to enter the mouthpiece, which increases

the mouthpiece pressure: an arriving increase in pressure produces an even larger increase in pressure. Conversely, a decrease in pressure arriving at the reed pulls it towards the mouthpiece, reducing both the aperture and the flow of air

HOW DOES THE REED CONVERT THE ENERGY OF STEADY AIR FLOW INTO SOUND ENERGY?

In the absence of a resonating bore, let’s see how the flow U into the mouthpiece depends on blowing pressure P. At first, U increases rapidly with increasing P. But if you blow hard enough, P will close the reed against the mouthpiece, stopping the flow. This occurs at lower P for large lip force (red curve on the graph) than for small (blue). Consider playing with P and U values given by the red dot. The ratio of pressure to flow for steady or DC flow (the reciprocal slope of the dashed line, P/U) is the DC resistance for this point and, like an electrical resistance, it takes energy out of the system. But now consider the ratio of small change in pressure to the corresponding change in flow (∂P/∂U for mathematicians). Near the red dot, increased pressure decreases the flow, and vice versa, so the resistance for a varying or AC flow is negative (reciprocal slope of the solid black line). So the positive DC resistance of the reed takes energy out of the steady flow and the negative AC resistance puts some of that energy into the oscillating air flow.

Airflow vs blowing pressure

The clarinet has been studied scientifically in more detail than any other wind instrument, but most studies have concentrated on steady notes

➡



into the mouthpiece, which lowers the pressure further. So the combination of the mouth pressure and the elastic reed provide amplification for pressure waves reflecting at the reed. See the box for another way of understanding the reed gain. (This simple argument neglects the time for the reed to accelerate and so it fails for high notes. This is related to one of the limits to the high range of the instrument.)

Over most of the example shown in Fig 1, the amplification gain of the system is about three decibels per cycle: each oscillation in pressure is roughly 40% bigger than its predecessor, and has twice the energy. A sequence whose amplitude increases by the same factor over equal times is an exponential increase. Exponential increases cannot continue indefinitely. In the case of our

amplification system, once the pressure peak in the mouthpiece is equal to the pressure in the mouth, then further opening of the reed does not increase the maximum mouthpiece pressure – we call this saturation. Further, if the reed vibration is so big that the reed actually closes the mouthpiece aperture, the

vibration doesn’t get any bigger – though the aperture can stay closed for longer. As the note approaches saturation, the proportional rate of increase falls below exponential and, in just several cycles, the note reaches its steady amplitude (Figs 1 and 2).

On a different timescale, Figure 2 shows whole notes. It graphs three different pressure measurements (bell, mouthpiece and mouth) for four different articulations: normal tonguing, with accent, sforzando, and staccato. The note is C5: written C in the middle of the stave. On this time scale, we don’t see the individual vibrations, just the envelope of the sound wave.

The sound pressure in the mouthpiece is much larger than that at the bell, but their envelopes are roughly the same shape. Unlike the others, the average pressure in the player’s mouth is not zero, because the player is blowing high pressure air to power the instrument. Notice that the black line for the mouth pressure becomes wider when the note starts: that wider shading is the sound measured in the mouth. The vibrating reed produces an oscillating flow into the clarinet and an oscillating flow of equal magnitude into the mouth. However, the sound pressure in the mouth is smaller than that in the mouthpiece. This is because the clarinet resonates at the frequency of the note played — and more importantly, the

Two studies involved experts and students playing modified clarinets. These had sensors to measure blowing pressure and sound in the player’s mouth

normal

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Figure 2. The pressures measured at the bell (pale), in the mouthpiece (darker) and mouth (black) for four different articulations. The dashed line shows the moment when the tongue ceases to touch the reed, an arrow (in staccato only) where it touches the reed again. (From Li et al., 2016).



reverse: a resonance of the bore is driving the reed. The player’s vocal tract also has resonances, but usually the frequencies of the vocal tract resonances occur well away from the playing frequency. (Interesting exceptions occur in pitch bending, altissimo, bugling and the first bar of Rhapsody in Blue; see our web site for details.)

Notice how the blowing pressure is varied during the note, and how the moment when the tongue releases the reed is coordinated with the blowing pressure. For the normal note, the mouth pressure builds at the slowest rate and reaches its maximum value shortly before the note reaches its maximum amplitude. It then stays constant at that value throughout most of the note. In the accented and sforzando notes, the pressure reaches a higher value than for the normal note, but is then reduced, so that the note amplitude is, as required, largest near the start and reduces through it. Observe that, in the normal note, the tongue is released at the lowest blowing pressure. From our brief discussion of the amplification at the reed, we expect that lower blowing pressure causes less air flow into the mouthpiece and lower initial amplification, and therefore a slower rate of increase in the sound amplitude. Probably without thinking, the player has done this because he wants the normal note to start more slowly than the accented, sforzando and staccato notes. (Most players in our study could not describe confidently their coordination of tongue and pressure.)

To understand the end of the notes, let’s consider first the staccato final transient. Here, the tongue immobilises the reed, so the sound wave in the bore receives no amplification. The sound cannot stop immediately, however. (If it did, we’d hear a ‘click’ or ‘pop’ at the end of the note.) The energy stored in the standing sound wave in the bore is gradually lost, as heat to the walls and as sound energy radiated from the bell and tone holes. The fraction of energy lost in each cycle is nearly constant, so this produces an exponential decay in the amplitude.

For the other notes, the decay is slower. In each of these, the note is stopped by gradually lowering the blowing pressure. As it is lowered, the amplification factor gradually falls; when the pressure reaches a level at which the amplification factor in a cycle becomes less than the fraction lost each cycle, then the note begins to decay. For this player, the accented and sforzando

notes have slowly falling blowing pressure. Near the end of the note, the pressure falls slowly below the break-even value: the value where reed amplification just makes up for losses. So for this player’s accented and sforzando notes, the decay rates are slower than for the normal note, which is in turn slower than the staccato, where the amplification is ‘turned off’ suddenly by the tongue.

From thinking about the explanation in the box, you can probably see that the reed gain depends on blowing pressure, lip force and position, lip damping, reed ‘hardness’, the shape of the mouthpiece and the amplitude of the note. Further, the losses depend on the note played and acoustic properties of the clarinet with a given fingering, so the rate of increase in sound after tonguing is a complicated

function of all these factors. Experiments under controlled conditions using the playing system showed that increased tongue force or initial reed acceleration make the note start earlier after tongue release, but do not affect the exponential rate of increase. Large tongue forces or sudden tongue release can however cause the higher harmonics to grow more quickly, which affects the timbre of the transient.

Clarinettists sometimes like to start a note slowly. If the tongue releases the reed when the blowing pressure is below the break-even value, then the note does not start until the break-even value is reached. If the blowing pressure doesn’t

rise much above this value, the note starts slowly. When we asked players to play minimal attack, they raised the pressure slowly until the note started, then either held it steady or reduced it slightly before slowly increasing it again. For a given lip force, however, tonguing can start notes at lower blowing pressure than the starting pressure in a slow pressure increase.

For human players, the coordination of tongue release and increase in blowing pressure was different at different pitches: for all articulations at the higher pitches, the tongue almost always released the reed before the break-even point; this rarely happened for low notes, particularly with expert players. There is a likely explanation for this. First, low notes have longer vibration cycles (a note an octave lower has a vibration that takes twice as long), so the same amplification per cycle gives a lower rate of exponential increase (in decibels per second) for lower notes. Further, lower notes saturate at higher pressure amplitudes. For notes initiated with the same pressure perturbation, these effects give longer transients for low notes. By starting the transient for low notes above the break-even point, players achieve transient times more comparable with those of high notes.

As Figure 2 suggests, when playing at mf, our players used the highest blowing pressures and thus achieved the highest exponential rates of increase for accents and sforzando. In fact, their attacks for these articulations were much like their attacks for normal notes at ff. We also noted that expert players could achieve faster rates than students. Finally, not all clarinettists use the same tonguing technique. For some, unlike Figure 1, the tongue motion had a large component of motion parallel to the reed. For others, the sides of the tongue curled upwards on either side of the reed. For further discussion and detail, and for much more about clarinet and saxophone acoustics, we refer you to our website. n

For further discussion and detail, and for much more about clarinet and saxophone acoustics, we refer you to our website

Two additional studies used an automated clarinet playing system, which provides us with a tireless, reproducible, experimental subject

Acknowledgments. We thank the Australian Research Council for support, Yamaha for instruments, Légère for reeds and our volunteer subjects.

The introductions ‘Clarinet Acoustics’ and ‘Saxophone acoustics’ are at http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/ or search ‘music acoustics’

The scientific papers supporting the present article, as well as sound files and video, are at http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/articulations.html

A multimedia introduction to waves and sound is at http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au or search ‘physclips’

HEATHER ROCHE


You may have noticed that times they are achanging. We all know of fruitful player/composer pairings throughout the clarinet’s history: Stadler/Mozart, Baermann/Weber, Hermstedt/Spohr, Mühlfeld/Brahms. However, all these were very much a personal one-to-one relationship and the fruits of this teaming up were spread by the player going off on his (always his) travels to show off and disseminate what has become core ‘standard’ clarinet repertoire. Imagine if the internet had been around for any of the above composers to dip into, or for any of the players to pop a performance on YouTube or blog about the works written for their special instruments – Stadler’s basset clarinet or Hermstedt’s added keys, for instance.

Nowadays one can find that pretty well anything is written about by someone somewhere on the internet. I searched for ‘clarinet multiphonics’ and got 29,500 hits in 0.43 seconds. Not a bad return – but how to find out if they are worth anything? Many are not. There is often confusion and conflicting results: a lack of clarity about what the results might be, a personal view that may not stand up to scrutiny, varied notations and more. What to do? Well, many composers and performers now have a splendid resource they can trust. Heather Roche has developed and continues to develop an extensive website covering many aspects of what some call ‘extended techniques’ in a thoughtful and helpful way, sharing a huge amount of information always taken from personal experience.

Wait! Don’t turn to another article on

seeing the word ‘multiphonics’! Working on them increases control of production enormously (great for those high and quiet Debussy challenges) and allows one to discover new finger combinations and methods of production that can be transferred to all sorts of repertoire (see the final note of the second of Paul Harvey’s Three Etudes on Themes of Gershwin where he introduces an optional multiphonic, for instance). Reviews of the horn player Punto (1746-1803) in the 1790s stated: ‘In his cadenzas he produced many novel effects, playing two-

and even three-part chords.’ They’re used in much jazz (mid-1940s Illinois Jacquet’s legendary tenor sax solo on Diggin’ the Count; Eric Dolphy’s wonderful bass clarinet playing), in eastern European folk music and can also be great fun to fiddle around with on your own when no one is listening!

Heather’s website covers many kinds of multiple sounds, each described quite extensively, with fingerings, audio and visual demonstrations – also, usefully, showing what doesn’t always work. Her regular blogs cover a wealth of other topics too: short articles on some composer/performer relationships, a fascinating look at a variety of methods of articulation including double tonguing (showing Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream), topics on all sizes of clarinet, women composers... The list goes on. One useful aspect is the opportunity to

Ian Mitchell profiles Heather Roche, a Canadian and now London-based clarinettist, blogger and contemporary music advocate

reply and offer comments or ask questions. Not everything might be perfect in such an array of topics, but there is a friendly and honest approach that encourages dialogue.

Chatting to Heather in her flat around the corner from Goldsmiths College in south east London, I asked her how this interest in ‘contemporary’ music came about. Growing up in Victoria, British Columbia she went through the standard band system – learn as you go. Her senior high school band master was a clarinettist and encouraged Heather to apply to

read music at the local University of Victoria. There she studied ‘standard’ clarinet repertoire with Patricia Kostek, focusing on developing

technique and sound. She got to know some of the student composers from the composition department and began to play their works, allowing her to escape her shyness and jitters on stage and feel comfortable with contemporary music. Soon she became caught up in the excitement of working closely with (living) composers.

For her final recital she chose the Berio Sequenza, receiving help from Dániel Biró who was on the staff of the composition department and had memorised the guitar Sequenza, which has a similarly melodic focus to the clarinet one. The rest of programme was the Finzi Concerto and the Beethoven Trio Op 11. I doubt Finzi and Berio have rubbed shoulders since!

Not wanting to follow her chums to the masterclass circuit in the States, on the suggestion of a Canadian National Youth Orchestra tutor she applied to study

HEATHER ROCHE

At the moment she is particularly enjoying exploring the contra, for which she hopes some women composers might write

HEATHER ROCHE


with Joy Farrall at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She sent off a CD of her Berio performance and on the strength of that was offered a scholarship for the MMus course in orchestral artistry. Probably because there were lots of orchestral extracts to learn, she gravitated once again towards the composition department and began to discover new works and composers such as the Italian Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988).

Next stop was the Graz new music summer course in Austria, where the novel experience of being surrounded by like-minded musicians allowed her to push away the attitude still prevalent in Canada, and inherent in the Guildhall course, that the only way to make it is to get an orchestral job. Back in London and being out of action due to a back injury she was thinking of what to do next. Having done some orchestral auditions, she quickly realised this route was not for her and began to think of further study. Advised not to think of where to study but who to study with, and having come across the pianist Philip Thomas, professor of contemporary music performance at the University of Huddersfield, she applied to undertake a PhD.

Thus she reached base camp. The ascent to the dizzy heights of a doctorate, not surprisingly perhaps, continued her habit of mixing with composers. This had influenced her approach and way of playing so it was natural that the composer/performer relationship had to be central. Yet she couldn’t take the thought of simply sitting at a desk writing – she wanted her research to be practice-based. This proved not to be persuasive enough for Thomas, who insisted that her focus shouldn’t be the clarinet just because she was a clarinet player. Rather, she had to show why her work couldn’t be about any other instrument but the clarinet. She responded that it had to be the clarinet because: ‘It has such a history of how it developed; there are so many famous cases of clarinet/composer relationships that led to wonderful repertoire; also, it is such a flexible instrument in terms of all the possibilities for exploration that are never ending. As soon as you think you’ve finished you can start taking it apart! You can’t do that with other instruments – you can’t take a violin apart, or at least shouldn’t!’ So, she organised case studies with seven composers (her ‘lab rats’ as she called them), working with each on detailed development of a new piece.

Dr Roche might not have known what to do with herself on completion. Luckily life stepped in and she went off to Cologne, which only had one new music ensemble, Musikfabrik at the time. However, by chance, Roche had met a cellist at the Impuls contemporary music academy in Austria who needed a clarinet for a new Cologne-based ensemble – hand werk, which: ‘Defends the values of sustainability and recycling throughout the music world. From the paper mountain of existing works, we salvage the finest materials for refining and reimagining. Using the Pierrot line-up, we not only pursue classically composed works for our own instruments, but add to our repertoire works for unconventional instruments, for example, common items (tables, balloons, etc), voices, and electronic sound sources’. Heather was with them for seven busy years before returning to London, where she has developed an active performing career, playing all sizes of clarinet. At the moment she is particularly enjoying exploring the contra, for which she hopes some women composers might write, as she has found none yet who have done so.

We ended our chat by discussing audiences and what her thoughts were about attracting people to new sound worlds. One of her fascinating blogs, entitled ‘9 gateway pieces to contemporary music for pop lovers’, is about this: she pairs up examples of (mainly) experimental- or post-rock

music with ‘contemporary classical’ music that is not a million miles away in sound world – yet the former might attract 5,000 at a festival, and the latter a couple of hundred at a concert. How to get the 5,000 to be aware of the other? It does happen, but rarely. Of course, it should work both ways.

It has been pleasing to find someone so admirably committed to a wide range of ‘contemporary music’ (an uncomfortable and ill-defined phrase these days) who is keen and willing to put a lot of work into sharing it through social media. I encourage people to explore her site

(https://heatherroche.net). Heather is also a regular tweeter (@heather_roche) and the day after we met she tweeted a picture of a tattoo she had put on her arm of the fingering of her favourite multiphonic. That is commitment. n

Heather Roche continues to develop an extensive website covering many aspects of what some call ‘extended techniques’

Royal College of Music saxophone professor Kyle Horch writes

about the birth of Film Noir, an ambitious new piece for sax

octet by Ivor McGregor

On Friday 22 June earlier this year, at about 7.50pm, I stood in front of eight players from the Royal College of Music (RCM) Saxophone Ensemble, about to give the downbeat to begin the second work in the annual concert that I conduct. An exciting moment. It was the world premiere of a new piece for saxophone octet – Film Noir, by Ivor McGregor – and the culmination of an idea that had begun four years earlier. The commission of the piece was partly funded by CASSGB*, so I was asked to write something for the magazine about the new piece and the process by which it went from idea to reality.

The saxophone octet is a medium I have been encouraging since 2001, when I started leading Saxophone Ensemble projects as part of my work as a saxophone professor at the RCM. In creating the ensemble I was inspired, probably like many of my colleagues in the saxophone teaching world, by the excellent Paris Conservatoire Saxophone Ensemble, which I heard perform at the 2000 World Saxophone Congress in Montreal. Practical considerations, however, have meant that I have needed to adapt the Paris model – a 12-part ensemble including sopranino and bass saxophones – to suit the circumstances of a London music college. The RCM’s budget has never yet stretched far enough to allow the purchase of a bass saxophone. And, while the Paris class has a constant number of 12 saxophone students, the numbers of saxophone students at British music colleges fluctuate from year to year. Sometimes the RCM class has been as large as 18 students in recent years, but 20 years ago eight to 10 students was more usual.

When I began the ensemble all those years ago, there were few published saxophone ensemble arrangements available, and most of what existed was in the 12-part format. To run the RCM ensemble I have therefore needed to encourage new compositions and arrangements for the type of ensemble the RCM resources could support. So, I have found that a saxophone octet has been a more practical medium than the Paris 12-part model. I think of it as a positive thing, not a limitation. I feel that by eschewing the bass and sopranino saxophones, all the students are then asked to play the SATB members of the saxophone family that they already play in saxophone quartets, and will most often be asked to play in professional life. And furthermore, when seeking to develop repertoire for the RCM ensemble by asking composers to write for it, I feel a saxophone octet is a beneficial medium to suggest for the composer as well – it has more possibility to have future performances in other colleges, or in a professional situation if two quartets collaborate in a performance.

As the first person to conduct the work, I found it a really fascinating piece and a successful addition to the saxophone octet repertoire

FILM NOIR

KYLE HORCH

38 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018 www.cassgb.orgPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

ensemble over the past 18 years. Some of these new works have been drawn from student composers (many of whom have since gone on to professional success) such as Charlotte Bray, Charlotte Harding, Kristina Arakelyan, Jody Ellen Robinson, Elizabeth Drury and Jorge Puig; I have also prevailed on professional colleagues such as Mark Allaway, Andy Jackson, Liz Johnson, Ian Stewart, and now Ivor McGregor, to write for the octet combination too.

I have known Ivor McGregor for many years as a violinist. He lives near Birmingham and we have often worked as colleagues over the past 20 years, booked as freelance players with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In April and May 2014, we had several CBSO concerts together, and chatted as usual during tea breaks. During our conversation one day, he mentioned that he also worked as a composer. I was immediately curious to hear Ivor’s music, so at the following rehearsal he loaned me some recordings from live performances of some of his chamber works. I really liked what I heard, finding it thoughtful, intelligent contemporary music possessed of an original voice that offered a challenge to players and listeners but not in an awkward or unattractive way. He had never written for saxophone, and asked if I had any suggestions in that direction. Always being on the lookout for interested composers with my RCM Saxophone Ensemble conductor hat on, I suggested the ensemble as an outlet and explained the advantages of writing for saxophone octet. We continued to correspond through the autumn of that year about the possibility of a new piece for the Ensemble’s June 2015 concert, but in the end, Ivor had too much performing work in his diary to permit composing a work at that time. ‘No worries!’ I replied, ‘Consider it an open invitation.’

In April 2017, Ivor emailed me out of the blue and said he was finding the time and motivation to compose again, and was I still interested in a work for saxophones? ‘Absolutely!’ was my reply. When I was next working in Birmingham in June 2017, we met and had a long conversation, followed up by more emails, about the saxophone, instrumental ranges, technical possibilities, initial ideas for the proposed work, and funding possibilities to help make it happen. From my perspective, the fund-raising was the major hurdle. Ivor suggested applying to the RVW Trust, whose guidelines permit them to fund up to 50% of the commission of a new work, which was to be entitled Film Noir. Since music colleges aim to present the new music of their own student composers, I could not turn to the RCM to fund 50% of a commission from a professional composer from outside the institution. This meant finding another solution for the other half of the commission fee. On reflection I felt it would be best for Ivor and his new work if I reached out to colleagues and tried making it a group

For example, in the 1990s the Spitalfields Festival had the Apollo and Saxploitation Saxophone Quartets collaborate in a performance of Roderick Skeaping’s octet Cries, Bells, Chants and Whispers. More recently, Joel Love’s octet Three Images was premiered by the Kenari and Barkada Saxophone Quartets at the 2016 North American Saxophone Alliance National Conference, a wonderful performance that can be seen on YouTube.

So, with these thoughts in mind, I have gradually been building up a collection of new octet compositions and arrangements for the RCM

commission. I had seen this be successful before: in the USA, Kenneth Radnofsky has commissioned several fine saxophone works from major composers by creating consortiums of interested players who band together to fund the commission; in the UK, Graham Fitkin’s work for tenor saxophone and CD accompaniment, Passing, was commissioned in a similar way by a group of players led by Andy Scott. With these examples in mind, I contacted three friends

and colleagues: Naomi Sullivan, head of saxophone at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire; Alistair Parnell, director of the Equinox Saxophone Ensemble; and Andrew Wilson, director of the Chetham’s School Saxophone Choir. Would they be interested in joining forces in commissioning, and then performing, Ivor’s new piece, with the price being 7.5% of the

commission fee to be paid as a library purchase of the finished work? All the other groups were intrigued with the idea, which by that point had a title and a general concept, Film Noir. Naomi, Alistair, and Andrew agreed to come on board, which meant we now had a further 30% of the commission. That left the final 20%, for which I made an application to the CASSGB for funding. July and August 2017 were spent in front of my computer agreeing the group commission with Naomi, Alistair, and Andrew, writing applications, having Ivor proofread them, making revisions, and sending them off. With all the groups involved, and the multiple performances of the new piece planned, including one by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Saxophone Ensemble at the 2018 Zagreb World Saxophone Congress, we managed to get positive responses from both the RVW Trust and CASSGB by November 2017. Then, Ivor could finally get down to composing, safe in the knowledge that his work would be paid for and given numerous performances.

After that, things moved on fairly quickly. On 30 December 2017, Ivor wrote to me saying he had

FILM NOIRLike film noir, the saxophone has often been found lurking in the shadows, struggling under a sense of cynicism, a lonely voice in the conservative orchestral world

RBC saxes, Naomi Sullivan

KYLE HORCH


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KYLE HORCH


completed the piece, attaching a draft of the score. We arranged for him to come visit me at home in London at the beginning of February 2018. Ivor’s purpose was to have me play through individual parts from the score to let him hear how they would sound on an actual saxophone, taking comments from me where needed about technical or notational issues in case he wanted to make any changes before printing out the parts. Having done that, he duly sent me a set of parts on 30 April, which I handed out to the ensemble at the end of May. All ensemble concerts at the RCM are done as projects, rehearsed intensively over a period of seven to 10 days before the concert. The first read-through of Film Noir was done on Sunday 17 June. Ivor was able to come down to London for that first rehearsal, which was really helpful in getting us on track with the style quickly. We rehearsed it several more times in the following days, and gave the premiere on Friday 22 June to a very positive reception from the audience. I felt a sense of completion and satisfaction at having brought a new piece of music from idea to performance, as well as considerable relief that I had not made a mess of conducting of it!

What kind of piece is Film Noir? Ivor writes: ‘the title Film Noir is not to be taken too literally – there is no actual programme or narrative in this piece. Rather, I wanted to

evoke a sound-scape which might have come from an imaginary film. Film noir refers to the type of films made in the 40s and 50s, usually very gritty black and white thrillers (Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Casablanca, Cry of the City and The Wrong Man to name but a few). Their themes usually centre around corruption, crime and the sleazy darkness of human nature, typically involving cynical, hard-nosed detectives, femmes fatales and downtrodden victims. Allusions to these characters might be felt throughout my piece as part of the allusive fabric and the listener is free to imagine his or her own scenarios. It falls broadly into two main sections and plays in a virtually continuous state of development and harmonic restlessness. The language is dissonant and sometimes even abrasive; I wanted to unashamedly borrow from the “full leather jacket” feeling of jazz sax without actually writing in that style. After all, this is classical sax as opposed to the breathier, more vibrato-laden sound of the big bands and great jazz exponents who blossomed at virtually the same time as the film

noir genre in cinema. That the first performance takes place in the RCM is very significant for me, as I was a student there of violin and composition back in the early 1980s. My composition teacher Alan Ridout was a massive support and great influence on me. It is surely fitting that I take this long-awaited opportunity to signal my gratitude and admiration for this unassuming and gentle man by dedicating Film Noir to his memory.’

As the first person to conduct the work, I found it a really fascinating piece and a successful addition to the saxophone octet repertoire: a strong, solid core of crunchy, often dark harmonies, mixed with quirky, playful interactions between all the parts and, at times, an almost comic, waltz-like melody evoking the Viennese setting I associate with the film The Third Man. All of which leads to a powerful, striking ending. Naomi Sullivan conducted the second performance, given by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) Saxophone Ensemble on 10 July at the World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb. She wrote to me afterwards, saying ‘Ivor’s piece is weirdly tricky, but I think it’s effective and really works!’ She has also written her own programme note about the piece, which gives her more considered perspective on the work, summing it up brilliantly: ‘Film Noir invites both players and listeners to experience the vivid world of the film noir genre but unlike many protagonists of this cinematic world, as the

piece reaches its dramatic end we are freed before meeting our downfall. The voice of the saxophone is used by Ivor McGregor to explore the complex characteristics of film noir and his new work captures all this, and much more. Like most aspects of the film genre, the saxophone has often been found lurking in the shadows, struggling under a sense of cynicism, a lonely voice in the conservative orchestral world. If Adolphe Sax is the hero of our saxophone story, his life was certainly shadowed by paranoia, musical adversaries, wisecracking competitors and imitators trying to take him down with their dastardly deeds. Looking back to these 1940s films, the stories have such a distinct flavour, and with nostalgia comes a sense of humour: in Double Indemnity the femme fatale has a heated exchange

with the antihero, in the grocery store, over a row of tinned peaches. Ivor McGregor’s Film Noir really challenges your imagination and evokes this world so effectively. I’d encourage any saxophone ensemble to investigate this very welcome, new addition to the repertoire; it’s a rewarding challenge for all involved.’

In late June 2018, between the RCM and RBC performances, Ivor made some small revisions to the score. The future performances planned during 2018-19 – a further RBC Saxophone Ensemble performance in Birmingham, as well as others by the Equinox Saxophone Ensemble and the Chetham’s School Saxophone Choir – will be of the revised, final version. Do look out for these performances on each ensemble’s web pages. A set of score and parts of the final version of Film Noir has been donated to the CASSGB library, so if there are any enterprising octets or pairs of quartets out there looking for a new piece to work on, get borrowing! Ivor’s music is published on the Hummingbird Maskarade imprint, which will publish the work for sale in due course. Many thanks to CASSGB for supporting the composition of this excellent addition to saxophone octet repertoire! n

*All CASSGB members can apply for funding for their projects if they meet the specified criteria. Find out more here: www.cassgb.org/funding-applications

A set of score and parts of the final version of Film Noir has been donated to the CASSGB library, so get borrowing!

Dress rehearsal at the Royal College of Music

ADVERTISER FEATURE


Albest Musical Instruments Co Ltd, the company behind P. Mauriat saxophones and other wind instruments, was founded by Alex Mingmann Hsieh, a saxophone enthusiast, in 1998. A student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Hsieh had already developed strong ideas on the sound quality, playability and looks of an instrument during his formative years in the military, where he played the French horn. As the millennium approached, Hsieh resolved to bring his vision to fruition, and the P. Mauriat brand was born.

MissionP. Mauriat was created to ensure that musical instruments of the highest quality were easily accessible to everyone, enabling musicians of all standards to enjoy the finest sound quality. P. Mauriat’s aim is to deliver ‘the dream horn of the future’ to the modern-day musician, producing the highest grades of build quality, sound and performance with every instrument. Despite continually pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved, improvement and refinement remains the aim; to this end, regular testing, feedback and critique is sought from endorsing artists, professional players and hobbyists in order to facilitate new advances, and the challenge of turning a good instrument into a great one remains a constant, unrelenting objective.

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resonant due to the extensive hand-hammering process

it must undergo in the factory. In fact, a single

saxophone body will be hammered as many

as 400 times before it is allowed to proceed to the next technician for final shaping. Each tone hole is drawn from the saxophone, one by one, to ensure the

precision and consistency required in order to achieve excellent response and intonation, a manufacturing process that is unique to P. Mauriat and something the company prides itself on. Lacquering is completed in three separate stages in order to achieve a timeless, vintage look that will last for decades, before the instrument begins the final phase of production, the process of hand engraving. This painstaking work is performed by one of P. Mauriat’s specialists, armed with nothing more than a simple handheld tool and years of experience. Once complete, each instrument is carefully inspected and tested by a full-time quality control artist to ensure that only the finest instruments make their way into the hands of musicians. P. Mauriat’s instruments are

enjoyed by players of all abilities, from keen amateurs through to top-level touring professionals.

Endorsing artistsP. Mauriat’s growing roster of endorsing artists is made up of players from all corners of the world, covering a wide variety of nationalities and musical styles. As well as providing a home for established acts from the traditional brass-based worlds of blues, soul and jazz, P. Mauriat seeks to embrace players from modern musical settings, giving younger acts a platform on which to build their careers. Among the most

recent additions to the P. Mauriat stable of talent include John Waugh, who, along with teaching and performing session work, records and tours with pop rock band The 1975; and Evgeny Minev, a London-based saxophonist and the first Bulgarian to sign an endorsement deal with P. Mauriat. He is set to release his debut album in 2018.

The music of today demands an instrument that can adapt and excel in a number of different settings and applications. Constructed using top-quality French brass, P. Mauriat saxophones exhibit fantastic response, full-bodied sound, precise intonation and outstanding mechanics, allowing each player to freely transmit their musical ideas, and to realise their maximum potential. n

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P. Mauriat Clarinet & Saxophone is grateful to all of our advertisers for their continued support. In this new feature we shine a light on one advertiser per issue, beginning with this profile of P. Mauriat by Ben Chapman from JHS, P. Mauriat’s distributor

Hand engraving is performed by one of P Mauriat’s specialists, armed with nothing more than a simple handheld tool and years of experience

LÉGÈRE


Redefining

REEDS

MP: How did the company first come about?

MK: The story begins with my co-founder, Guy Légère, who was working as a PhD scientist in a remote part of Quebec. Aged 28, he decided to take up the clarinet as a hobby. He is a scientific guy and quickly became a little frustrated with reeds, so he started to look around to see what the alternative options were.

Then one day, he saw an article about this fantastic material called oriented polymer, which he thought might be a promising substitute for cane. I work as a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and in 1997, Guy just walked through the door, sort of like a cold call, with this idea that maybe this material would work well for clarinet and saxophone reeds. I had done some research on the material and published some papers, and pretty much right away, I could see it was quite promising, since the properties of oriented polymer pretty closely match the important properties of moist cane

So I thought it was interesting and agreed to help out. We worked away at it, sent some samples out to local players and there was some promise. Then in the summer of 1998, we made the decision to go to ClarinetFest in Columbus, Ohio.

Prior to that, Guy and I had worked for about three or four weeks in Guy’s house, in a small lab space in his basement, where he had built a homemade numerical

controlled cutting machine (CNC) and we painstakingly made 60 reeds to take with us to ClarinetFest. I’m not a musician. I’m a material scientist, and up until that point, I only had Guy’s word that the reeds were working well. But I was fully on board and we took our 60 reeds to Columbus for ClarinetFest.

We sat around in our booth for the first few hours and no one really paid too much attention to us, until Richard Hawkins [professor of clarinet at Oberlin

Conservatory of Music] came over and started playing and expressed great surprise at how well our reeds worked. As other people heard him play they quickly also came over to the booth and I think within an hour or so we had sold all the reeds we had taken with us. There was a lot of hype. And at that point, I knew we were going to have a big success on our hands.

MP: How did the company grow from there? Was there a particular turning point?

MK: We incorporated the company shortly after the ClarinetFest, leased a small industrial space and hired our first employee, who is still with us today, 20

years later. Although we have advertised more recently, the demand has really risen through word of mouth right from the beginning.

We eventually moved into a second space and the set-up grew quite organically as demand increased. Our factory is based about one hour north of Toronto in a town called Barrie, which is also Guy’s hometown, and all of our product is made in Canada and distributed from there.

I’d say one of the main turning points was the development of the Signature Series reed. Guy had been working on synthetic double reeds for a long time and during that process, around 2009,

we made a discovery which was a way of achieving even better results by making the reed from a slightly stiffer material and making it slightly thinner, allowing for more transverse flexibility in the reed. The practical outcome of this was a slightly richer tone and more overtones in the sound. The result was the Signature Series reeds which, right from the beginning, were perceived to be a little more suited to high-end professional players and were to become more popular than our original cut, which is now branded as the Classic Reed.

MP: Your website says it takes around two weeks from when the plastic is moulded to the reed being packaged. What happens during that time?

This October marks the 20th anniversary of Légère Reeds. Based in Ontario, Canada, the company’s brand of synthetic reed is used by some of the world’s top clarinet and saxophone players and has become a leading alternative to cane reeds. Michael Pearce hears from co-founder and president Mark Korschot about the company’s journey

I could see it was quite promising, since the properties of oriented polymer pretty closely match the important properties of moist cane

LÉGÈRE


MK: Firstly, the important thing to explain is that you use the words ‘from when the plastic is moulded’. An ordinary piece of plastic cutlery, for example, is made in a moulding process: you close a steel mould, force some molten polymer inside, cool it, open the mould, and out pops the part. It’s very easy and inexpensive. But that’s not how our reeds are made at all. Although they are made from a type of thermoplastic, we first take the material and process it in a very special way to align the molecular chains. So if you imagine a tray of spaghetti, with the spaghetti representing the molecular chains, these are then stretched and pulled in order to line up all the chains. This causes the material to become stiffer and it can be made as stiff, or even stiffer, than natural cane. So that’s the first part of the process.

Then we let the material sit on the shelf for a while before cutting the reeds from a solid block of the processed material. All reeds are then hand-finished, inspected by hand and tested in our specially-built bend tester before finally being labelled, packaged and shipped out.

MP: Your website also says you are constantly working to improve the consistency of your reeds. With today’s advanced technology, how come this remains such a challenge?

MK: We have an extremely good material that we use for the reeds, so that does not change, but there is always going to be a little bit of fluctuation because the strength of the reed is extremely sensitive to the thickness of the tip. The machines have a certain precision but there is a limit to what they can do. We machine to within the tolerance of a fraction of a thickness of a human hair. That’s the kind of tolerances we’re able to achieve nowadays, so this is super high-precision machining we

are doing. But the way the reed is held when machining, the methods we use for machining, the tooling we use, all are things which can be improved and we continue to work on to ensure every reed is exactly what we expect it to be.

MP: You recently launched the ‘Légère BETA Testing Project’, allowing any player to register and become involved in the testing process of new products. What was the thinking behind this?

MK: There were a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a great opportunity to test our reeds with a wide variety of players. We have a large artist community and many high-level friends of the company who help us

with testing, but we also want to check that our reeds are widely accepted and enjoyed by players at a variety of levels. The other thing is that it’s a great way to get our message out. People are excited to be involved, we’re excited to have people involved and the feedback we’ve received has been extremely valuable as part of the development process. Unfortunately, not everybody that registers can take part as we only have a limited number of trial reeds, but we’re trying to include as wide a variety of people as possible.

MP: Do you think one day all players will be using synthetic reeds?

MK: I’d like to think so. I think people will always have individual preferences. We can only make three or four cuts of a clarinet or saxophone reed and people will always want a variety of choices. What we want to accomplish is to be available to players who wish to play at the very highest level. Certainly we are aiming to be a possible choice for players in the world’s top orchestras. And we’re there already. We currently have numerous

players in the Berlin Philharmonic, for example, using our reeds. So I definitely foresee a time when synthetic reeds will be considered a normal part of the equation and it wouldn’t be unusual to choose a synthetic reed.

MP: Finally, what does the future hold for the company?

MK: We still have plans to introduce additional cuts of reed to achieve a wider variety of tonal options for players. Last year, we introduced the European Cut Signature B flat clarinet reed, which has proven to very popular, and we’d like to replicate that success in some of our other single reeds.

The other main push right now is on our double reeds. Oboe and bassoon reeds are our two commercially available products, but we’re also working on cor anglais reeds and other double reeds such as bagpipe reeds.

We are fortunate to have found what I think is the perfect synthetic material for making reeds. The foundation of the company is the discovery that this material is perfect for the job and it’s been a huge technical challenge. Going back to that first ClarinetFest, I thought we had a great product here and it was going to be easy, but it’s actually really not been. Our material is very different from working with ordinary plastics and there are so many challenges to getting it just right. It has been, and continues to be, a fantastic technical challenge. n

www.legere.com

We are aiming to be a possible choice for players in the world’s top orchestras

CD REVIEWS


CDCD REVIEWS

Saxophone

Want to listen to a few old classics, nicely arranged for sax quartet, safe in the knowledge that you’ll come away humming the tune? Well this definitely is not the disc for you! This is brand-spanking new music, 21st century composition, fluid and exhilarating sound worlds – all packaged into an album that’s as cutting edge as the latest Apple iPhone release (other brands of smartphone are available).

Saxophilia (www.saxophilia.com), with their self-titled album released on Redshift Records, are a Vancouver-based quartet. Formed in 1996, they comprise Julia Nolan (sop), Kris Covlin (alto), David Branter (tenor) and Colin MacDonald (baritone). They’re Canadian, the music they play is Canadian, they’re supported by Canada Council for the Arts, and this recording really sets the standard for what’s happening with Canadian new music right now.

In their own words: ‘This recording represents the best of 20 years of devotion to newly created Canadian works. It was an intensely prepared labour of love for Saxophilia. We think it contains some of the strongest pieces composed for saxophone quartet in the 21st century, encompassing widely varying approaches to the capabilities of the saxophone quartet. Explore and enjoy!’

The album opens with Peter Hannan’s Fast Truck Bop, a five-movement work that has its origins in a previous piece Hannan wrote which involved recording live traffic noise then notating it for instrumental performance. The result is a fast-moving, often hypnotic piece that grabbed me from the outset. Dividing it into five short movements was particularly effective I felt, as each movement has its own individual

identity. The repetitive fragments of melody are frantic and anxious in much of this work, but the sublimely gentle, meditative fourth movement made my lips start aching in sympathy just listening to three minutes of long low notes.

Next up is Derek Charke’s Last Call, premiered by Saxophilia in 2002, then Obsess by Dorothy Chang (2003) and Gylaling written by John Burke (2004), also a Saxophilia commission. The fifth and final work on the album is Triple Saxophone Quartet composed by Saxophilia’s baritone player, Colin Macdonald, which can be performed with one live quartet and two pre-recorded. ‘With Vigour’ (I) is cool, with funky sounds utilising loopstation-esque writing that halts abruptly to give way to the rather softer ‘With Tenderness’ (II). This movement lets us hear multiple layers of sound, little bits of melody repeated and passed around the ensembles with care. It’s the ‘close your eyes and chill’ movement, before ‘With Fervour’ (III) brings us moments of Stravinsky-like ‘groove’, alongside motifs popping up as rapidly as meerkats in the sand, leading the disc to a climatic finish.

This piece, like the entire disc, isn’t just ‘fire in a pet shop’ contemporary music that’s overly complex for the sake of it. It’s melodic, authentic and makes sense to me. It has heart and soul. The saxophony is of the highest quality throughout and the recording is real: keys clicks, breath sounds and the rest. For me, more programme notes would enhance the listening experience, but I guess that’s what the internet is for, and, like the packaging of that Apple iPhone, less is more.

Neil Crossley

SAXOPHILIA Saxophilia

Redshift Records

Editor's choice

CD REVIEWS


À MONSIEUR ADOLPHE SAXJoaquin Sáez Belmonte (saxophone)Natalia Lentas (pianoforte)Dohr

The relatively young age of the saxophone compared to other woodwinds means that historical research into the saxophone is also at an early stage. This CD brings together works written by composers who were active around the time Adolphe Sax was inventing and refining his new instrument. The 12 pieces from six composers are performed on a 1927 alto saxophone made by Selmer, not entirely authentic perhaps, accompanied on a Broadwood pianoforte from 1865. Most of the repertoire is compiled from Fantasia, Concours and Variation style pieces, all between three and 10 minutes long. Belmonte’s tone is vocal and communicative, suiting the operatic variations, and while the fast vibrato may not be to everyone’s taste, it forms part of the interpretation. The technique is impeccable and intonation surprisingly secure given the age and disparity between instruments. The alto is a Modele 26. The composers featured, none of them familiar, are Beeckman, Buot, Corbin, Mayeur, Genin and Marie.

Stephanie Reeve

BOTH DIRECTIONS AT ONCE: THE LOST ALBUMJohn Coltrane QuartetImpulse! records

On 7 June 2018 the New York Times announced it, and on 22 June the (UK) Times did the same. They both carried illustrated leading articles in their arts sections publicising the release of this CD on 29 June. It’s not every day that a jazz tenor/soprano saxophonist like John Coltrane – who died in 1967, recorded this album in 1963 and had it released 55 years later – makes headlines in the international quality press. What is going on? Well, in three words: a musical metamorphosis.

Coltrane was not at all artistically inconspicuous in the four years before this ‘lost album’ was originally captured to tape in Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio. He had already blazed the trail of post-bop jazz into ‘modal jazz’ (with Miles Davis) garnering a host of fans in the process (eg Kind of Blue). So on 6 March 1963, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, along with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, post-bop and ‘free’ jazz began to co-exist, although the term ‘free’ was not assigned at the time.

Later albums from Coltrane contain much more of this new approach to improvisation, but the ‘lost album’ documents his very first excursions into the avant-garde. Some might call this a tentative exploration into the future, bolstered by tracks that stick with a commercially successful jazz style. Firstly, we are treated to both soprano and tenor solos. Secondly, all three of the accompanying musicians are absolutely at the top of their game. Thirdly, we have (as the Times’s John Bungey puts it) a mixture of blues, be-bop and ballads. And fourthly, the recording fidelity is excellent.

Seven tracks deliver 47 minutes of interesting and well played jazz (buyers of a deluxe edition can get an additional disc with seven alternative takes – three of which are devoted to a Coltrane-signature ‘innovative’ track, ‘Impressions’). Track 1 is an untitled 12-bar in a minor key with Coltrane on soprano in typical post-bop style. ‘Nature Boy’ follows on tenor with McCoy resting and a strong hint of future developments. The third track, also untitled, has Coltrane back on soprano with even more hints of the avant-garde and a tremendous solo from Tyner. In the vein of My Favorite Things Coltrane next plays ‘Vilia’ on tenor – very tasteful. ‘Impressions’, based on the ‘So What’ chord sequence, demonstrates Coltrane, on tenor, edging toward the avant-garde again. ‘Slow Blues’, the longest track, provides a lesson on how to squeeze more out of the most hackneyed sequence in the whole of jazz, with fine performances from everyone. The group closes out with ‘One Up, One Down’ with Coltrane on tenor – a brisk own composition with a generous helping of his improvisation, again leaning toward the avant-garde. Nothing to frighten the horses and everything to confirm John Coltrane as a true jazz pioneer.

Kenneth Morris

CD REVIEWS


This CD features a concert recorded live at the Philharmonie, Berlin in September 1970 with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Aaron Copland. This previously unreleased material is a valuable insight into a composer conducting his own music along with that of Elliott Carter and Charles Ives. Overall the recorded sound is very good and there is little audience noise to intrude on these performances apart from a well-deserved bravo at the end of the symphony. My one gripe is that occasionally the bass of the orchestra sounds a bit muddy, but this can happen with a live recording.

The CD opens with Carter’s youthful Holiday Overture, a work that fizzes with excitement, with complicated fugal lines and moments of great virtuosity within the orchestral sections. For me the opening tempo is a little slow, and some of the punchy woodwind figures are not as clear as they could be. The tempo does seem to go up a notch in the central string fugue passage, and here the brass and woodwind figurations really come alive. The closing of this work is a tour de force of orchestral colour, and the cheeky ending always makes me smile.

The crowning achievement on this CD is Ives’s Decoration Day. The multiple split string parts are as clear as a bell, and both the conductor and orchestra seem to relish every time signature, with every little complicated rhythmic passage executed precisely. The fast march section is exhilarating and played with real panache, and certainly you cannot help but get caught up in the excitement of the music.

The other two works on the CD are both by Copland: his Clarinet Concerto, featuring the soloist Karl Leister, and Symphony No 3. The

Clarinet

CDCD REVIEWS

COPLAND: SYMPHONY NO 3 AND CLARINET CONCERTO Berliner Philharmoniker, Aaron Copland (conductor)Testament

Clarinet Concerto is a great piece, comprising the first movement in a smooth cantabile style, which always reminds me of Debussy’s orchestration of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No 3, and a second movement that flies along with jazz-infused textures – not surprising considering that this work was originally written for Benny Goodman. These two movements are linked by a cadenza for the soloist. Leister shows a phenomenal technique throughout, managing the wide intervals with ease. His tone is clear and concise, and you have to remind yourself that this is a live performance – and what a performance it is.

There are only two things for me that detract slightly from the performance. As there is no percussion included in the orchestration, Copland asks for slap bass. Due to the muddy sound of the recording, instead of a sharp kick this is more like a soft slap. Secondly, while admiring Leister’s playing and the fantastic top B flat and glissando ending to the work, I feel he could be more relaxed and laid back in the cadenza. Where he finds time to breathe during this section amazes me.

The concluding work of this CD is Symphony No 3, where the Copland world of Americana ballet music is represented in a full-blown classical symphony for large orchestra. This is no easy work, but here the orchestra does a fantastic job, making the music sound easy. They obviously love playing it and are clearly inspired to have the composer as conductor. The concluding movement begins with the famous ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ which is then developed into a rousing blockbusting finale. To all composition students: listen to the earlier movements and you will find elements of this fanfare throughout the whole work. It’s a great work, played by a great orchestra and conducted with real flair by Copland. The last sounds you hear on the CD are applause and a rather big bravo. Bravo indeed!

Adrian Connell

Clarinet

Editor's choice

Mike Curtis already has a number of clarinet quartets to his name taking inspiration from all styles – classical to jazz, Latin and other world styles. A Week in Plasencia was inspired by a visit to the little-known town of the same name, east of Madrid, which followed a busy week in the latter at the 2015 Clarinet Fest. All eight movements (eight rather than seven, because both Sundays at the beginning and end of the week are included!) reflect a different location around the town. As expected, Spanish and Latin rhythms and decorations permeate the work, written for three B flats and bass clarinet. ‘Sunday, Plaza Mayor’ is for clarinet 1 and bass only, a light-hearted stroll through the town’s central square. All four players join the excursion to the aqueduct in ‘Monday, Acueducto San Antón’ – one in a bar, alternating between simple and compound feels. ‘Tuesday, Parque Ornitológica’ is lively and contains the trickiest rhythms in the form of a 9/8 bar with a 2+3+2+2 division. The next two are duets: ‘Parque de la Isal’ is for clarinet 2 and bass, while ‘Café Goya’, a potentially tricky number with a great 11/16 section, is for clarinet 3 and bass. ‘Friday, Rio Jerte’ is a cool, flowing river, with three crotchets in the melody against two crotchets in the bass. Saturday is the ‘Fiesta de Rumba’. Perhaps we could finish here, but the final ‘Sunday II, Plasencia Seprahrid’ finishes the work in the calm reflective manner that Curtis must have needed after his hectic week.

The rhythms look complicated but the feel is relaxed and straightforward as long as the pulse does not rush. Some experience with Latin rhythms would make this a little easier at first. Articulation and dynamics are carefully considered to add further colour. It is a super piece to play and should be entertaining for audiences. Individual movements are around two to three minutes each so could be played individually or tailored to suit the group performance. The whole work would probably be around 15 to 20 minutes. Suitable for Grade 6 upwards.

Stephanie Reeve

A WEEK IN PLASENCIAMike CurtisClarinet quartetMetropolis

MUSIC REVIEWS


LES SAISONSTchaikovsky, arr Giuliano ForghieriClarinet and pianoUt Orpheus

Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons started out life as a piano suite of 12 specially commissioned pieces. To give it historical context, he wrote it just after his first piano concerto was premiered and while he was working on Swan Lake.

This suite works well for clarinet and piano and I enjoyed playing it very much. A more apt title might be The Months as there is a piece for each month of the year. They vary hugely in style, employing different tempos, keys, time signatures and articulations in order to characterise the different features of each month. Most of the clarinet parts (depending on tempo) could be managed by an able Grade 6+ player, but I don’t think these pieces are necessarily best suited as teaching aids. Any number of them grouped together would work beautifully in a solo recital. The separate movements are mostly individually of a fairly substantial length but the arranger has incorporated sufficient rests within the clarinet part. The piano parts vary in difficulty enormously. The slower pieces have perfectly manageable piano parts for your average pianist, but the faster ones require quite advanced accompanying skills. Having said that, there’s plenty of substance in the clarinet part to play without an accompanist, at least initially. The edition itself is very nicely laid out, with proper consideration given to page turns in the clarinet part and plenty of direction given to interpretation.

Viv Halton

MUSIC REVIEWS


CAVATINE DU BARBIER DE SEVILLE (ROSSINI)Louis Mayeur, arr Christian DohrAlto saxophone and pianoEdition Dohr

Louis Mayeur was a Belgian clarinettist, saxophonist and composer and arguably more importantly one of Adolphe Sax’s inner circle. Sax commissioned a number of works from Mayeur for the saxophone, to be published by his company and used in his class at the Paris Conservatoire.

I think operatic-style pieces work very well for the classical saxophone, with the alto particularly being so close in sound to the human voice. Apart from a little confusion with bar numbering between the piano and sax part right at the start, this is a well laid out and nicely presented edition. The first page (marked ‘Andante’) requires some subdivision but is otherwise straightforward to play. In C major, it has a lovely lyrical tune that you can enjoy, experimenting with rubato and dynamics. The second ‘Moderato’ section sits nicely under the fingers and as with Papillon (reviewed above) is sensibly and effectively articulated. This work sits at around Grade 7/8 as it requires a slightly more advanced technique of fast-tongued semiquavers and more consistent fast passage work. A rewarding and enjoyable piece to play.

Viv Halton

PAPILLON: FANTASIE VARIÉEPierre Bouillon, arr Christian DohrAlto saxophone and pianoEdition Dohr

This is a very well-constructed standalone piece of approximately Grade 6/7 standard. It is basically a theme and variations but the sections are not always necessarily titled ‘variation’. Instead they are sections labelled with speed markings and different time signatures. The whole piece remains in one sharp for the saxophone, sitting easily under the fingers at all times. It has a medium-difficulty piano accompaniment with sensible and helpful piano cues in the saxophone part and is page-turn ‘friendly’. The articulation is well thought out and effective. It’s possibly a bit light on the dynamic markings, but at this level you’d expect the soloist to be capable of inputting their own shaping and dynamic ideas. There’s a short cadenza that is easily playable and helpfully cued into the piano part. Technically, this piece is mostly straightforward with just some nifty tonguing required in the very last section and a liberal use of palm key Ds to get around the semiquaver triplets in the last section. It put me in mind stylistically of the ‘Carnival of Venice’ trumpet variations, though not as long (or difficult!). It would be a nice addition to a medium-difficulty recital.

Viv Halton

Saxophone

DOLLY SUITEFaure, arr Giuliano ForghieriClarinet and pianoUt Orpheus

This is another transcription of a piano suite by Giuliano Forghieri, but this one is more varied in standard for the clarinet player. The first piece of the six movements is the very well-known ‘Berceuse’, probably only about Grade 4 on the clarinet. There are a couple at Grade 5 movements and the rest, again depending on the speed taken, are Grade 6-8.

The piano parts are consistently much harder than the clarinet parts and would require a very able accompanist. I think the suite works well for the clarinet, but I would have liked to have had some rests incorporated into the work (it is very full-on throughout) and perhaps a few more directions with regard to interpretation. Again, it would probably not be my first choice as a teaching aid, but it would be suited to someone who is already well versed in musical style and confident at forming their own interpretation without the aid of printed directions. As with the Tchaikovsky (page 47), it is a very stylish edition, well set out and easy to read.

Viv Halton

MUSIC REVIEWS


LIP SERVICEGordon LewinFlexible wind quartetBrass Wind Publications

The Harvest of Reeds series from Gordon Lewin is no doubt familiar to many ensembles. This latest addition, Lip Service, is a lovely set of three ‘Jazz-flavoured bonnes bouches’ arranged for wind quartet. The three are ‘Autumn Leaves’, ‘Lullaby of

Broadway’ and ‘Georgia on My Mind’. All are imaginatively treated to make them sufficiently varied from the many other versions of these standards available. ‘Autumn Leaves’ has a composed introduction, then goes three times round the melody with a key change and a quasi recit section in 6/8 in the middle. ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ features mainly homophonic writing for the top three parts with the bass

doing its own thing, either as a bass line or playing the melody. ‘Georgia on My Mind’ gives all four players a go with the melody with sensitive accompaniment. Watch out for the frequent key changes, which help to keep the music fresh each time the tune returns.

Part 1 is for flute, oboe, clarinet, sop or alto sax. Part 2 is as part 1 but without sop sax. Part 3 is for clarinet or tenor sax, and part 4 is clarinet, tenor sax, baritone sax, bass clarinet or bassoon. Players need to be reasonably competent as each part is independent, but the parts are written well enough to fit together. Part 3 is slightly easier, not going as high as 1 or 2, but it still has some lead lines. A very pleasant set, suitable for Grades 4 and up.

Stephanie Reeve

Flexible instrumentation

THE ESSENCE OF THE BLUESJim SnideroPlay-along versions for alto saxophone, tenor saxophone and clarinetAdvance Music

These 10 etudes have been written by Jim Snidero with the aim of developing techniques for playing and improvising on the blues. The three volumes for alto sax, tenor sax and clarinet contain the same basic tunes so can be used together, along with

editions for trumpet and trombone. Some minor details such as articulation and octaves differ between instruments. The introduction sets out a few words about the blues and the influences behind each of the tunes. Some are based on a particular piece, so ‘Duke’s Jam’ is based on Duke Ellington’s ‘C Jam Blues’ and ‘Bags’ uses both ‘Bag’s Groove’ and ‘SKJ’ by Milt Jackman. Others draw on a composer, so ‘Papa Lou’, a soul tune, is inspired by Lou Donaldson, and ‘Bird in Flight’ by Charlie Parker. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stanley Turrentine, Sonny Rollins, bebop and funk are the other players and styles used as inspiration. Each tune is clearly laid out with choruses indicated and chord symbols in the written key. Plenty of effects are marked

within the part, and articulation patterns are defined. A short blurb before each tune gives further background and a little more about the style required. I like that this gives ‘Rhythm Section’ information and asks the player to listen to the beat. After the etudes, a ‘Basic Blues’ theory section gives basic information about structure, keys and seventh chords. Further appendices give ideas in blues and minor pentatonic tonalities, and II-V-I endings over either four bars or two. Suggested listening gives two tunes per etude to discover. Jim Snidero plays saxophone and Ken Peplowski plays clarinet on the respective demo tracks, and the well-produced CD features an excellent rhythm section.

The pupil trying out this book with me was a Grade 5 tenor sax player who found it to be an extremely useful resource. The first two tunes were within his technical capabilities, while the later tunes were a stretch for him. The last, ‘Bird in Flight’, is more Grade 7 to 8 level. We found the backing track great for developing his own solo ideas. For repertoire suitable for a reasonably competent player, this is just right.

Stephanie Reeve

diaryCONCERTS


DIARY

1 Oct Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, London, 1pm

ANNELIEN VAN WAUWE (CLARINET), CHIAROSCURO QUARTETMozart Clarinet Quintet.• £16www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

5 Oct Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, Paradise

Place, 6.30pmJEAN TOUSSAINT QUINTETJean Toussaint (tenor saxophone) presents music from his 11th album as part of his UK tour.• £13www.thsh.co.uk

5 - 7 Oct Broadway Theatre, Eastcheap, Letchworth Garden City, various times

HERTS JAZZ FESTIVAL 2018Opening concert at 8pm on 5 October; final concert at 8pm on 7 October. Performers include Art Themen’s New Directions Quartet, Paul Dunmall’s Sunship Quartet with Alan Skidmore, Alan Barnes Octet and more.• £5-25www.hertsjazzfestival.co.uk

8 Oct St Peter’s, Notting Hill, Kensington Park Road, London, 1pm

SOUTH LONDON SAXOPHONE QUARTETLunchtime recital including a varied programme from the saxophone quartet repertoire.• Freewww.southlondonsaxophonequartet.co.uk

9 Oct St David’s Hall, The Hayes, Cardiff, 8pm

JESS GILLAMJess is joined by pianist Zeynep Özsuca and bassist Andee Price for an eclectic programme that includes Michael Nyman, Chick Corea, George Gershwin and David Bowie. The programme will also feature a new commission from a Welsh composer.• £8-16, students £3029 2087 8444www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk

10 Oct St Mary’s Creative Space, St Mary’s Hill, Chester, 7.30pm

JESS GILLAM (SAXOPHONE), ZEYNEP ÖZSUCA (PIANO)Music by Itturalde, Marcello, Ferraris, Britten, Harle, Debussy, Ravel, Williams, Nyman and Milhaud.• £16www.chestermusicsociety.org.uk

10 Oct Stapleford Granary, Bury Road, Stapleford, Cambridge, 7.30pm

ANDY SHEPPARD (TENOR SAXOPHONE) WITH ESPEN ERICKSEN TRIOEspen Erickson (piano and compositions), Lars Tormod Jenset (double bass) and Andreas Bye (Drums). A new collaboration between Espen Erickson Trio and Andy Sheppard.• £25www.staplefordgranary.org.uk

12 Oct Royal Concert Hall, Theatre Square, Nottingham, 7.30pm

JESS GILLAM, BBC PHILHARMONICBartók, Miraculous Mandarin; Glazunov, Saxophone Concerto; Debussy, Rhapsody for Orchestra and Saxophone; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No 5. Free pre-concert talk at 6.30pm in the auditorium: Jess Gillam in conversation.• £5.50-30.500115 989 5555www.trch.co.uk

13 Oct University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, 7.30pm

GERARD MCCHRYSTAL (SAXOPHONE) AND SOUTHAMPTON CONCERT WIND BANDNotes from America. To include John Williams’ Catch Me if You Can.• £10, concessions £8, under-16s £2www.turnersims.co.ukwww.scwb.org.uk

16 Oct North Hall, Guildford Road, Loxwood, West Sussex, 8pm

THE CLARINET MAESTROS AT LOXWOOD JAZZUS clarinettist Ken Peplowski along with Julian Stringle and Simon Bates form the front line of this band featuring Craig Milverton on piano.• £[email protected]

17 Oct Christ Church, 124 Lord Lane, Southport, 1pm

POLARIS DUOGillian Blair (saxophones) and Elinor Nicholson (harp) perform music by Andy Scott and Camille Saint-Saëns.• Freewww.christchurchsouthport.org.uk/ midweek-music/

20 Oct Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, London, 3pm

RELAXED CONCERT: MAGNARD ENSEMBLEJoin the Magnard Ensemble, a wind quintet that has recently released its debut album, and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee afterwards.• £5www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

20 Oct 36 Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London W1U 2BP, 7.30pm

NASH ENSEMBLE, RICHARD HOSFORD (CLARINET)Bruch, String Octet; Mendelssohn, String Quintet No 2 in B flat Op 87; Brahms, Clarinet Quintet in B min Op 115.• £15-38www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

20 Oct United Reformed Church, Mill Lane, Broxbourne,

Hertfordshire, 7.30pmMATTHEW SCOTT (CLARINET) AND ENSEMBLE MIRAGEProgramme to include septets and octets by Bruch, Françaix and Schubert.• £3-30www.hoddesdonmusic.org.uk/next_season.html

26 Oct The Stollar Hall, Hunts Bank, Manchester, 7.30pm

JULIAN BLISS (CLARINET), NORTHERN CHAMBER ORCHESTRAWeber, Clarinet Concerto No 2 in E flat; Arnold, Sinfonietta No 1; Suk, Meditation on the old Czech chorale ‘St. Wencesalas’; Haydn, Symphony No 102.• £5.45-27.25, free to under 18swww.ncorch.co.uk

Annelien Van Wauwe, 1 October

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26 Oct Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, 7.30pm

BEKTURGAN ZHOLAMAN (CLARINET), KAZAKH PHILHARMONIC CHAMBER ORCHESTRAFor the first time ever, a Kazakh orchestra performs in Great Britain to celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Multi-award-winning Kazakh clarinettist Bekturgan Zholaman performs Rossini’s Introduction, Theme and Variations alongside works by contemporary Kazakh composers and from the core European canon.• £10-35www.cadoganhall.com

27 Oct Heritage Centre, Roe St, Macclesfield, 7.30pm

JULIAN BLISS (CLARINET), NORTHERN CHAMBER ORCHESTRASee 26 Oct.• £21www.ncorch.co.uk

28 Oct 36 Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London, 11.30am

EMMA JOHNSON (CLARINET), FINGHIN COLLINS (PIANO)Beethoven, Variations on ‘Là ci darem la mano’; Brahms, Sonata in F minor Op 120 No 1; Stravinsky, Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet; Ravel, Piece en forme de habanera; Bernstein, Clarinet Sonata.• £16, concessions £14www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

28 Oct Saffron Hall, Audley End Road, Saffron Walden, 3pm

JESS GILLAM (SAXOPHONE), ZEYNEP ÖZSUCA (PIANO)Itturalde, Pequena Czardas; Milhaud, Scaramouche; John Harle, Rant; Marcello, Oboe Concerto in D minor; Michael Nyman, ‘If’ from the Diary of Anne Frank; Wiedoft, Valse Vanite; Britten, Temporal Variations.• £10www.saffronhall.com

29 Oct 36 Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London, 7.30pm

MAGNARD ENSEMBLEMusic for wind quintet and piano including Geyer, J S Bach, Enescu, Ligeti and Patterson.• £10-20www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

30 Oct 36 Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London, 5.45pm

THE HERMES EXPERIMENTClarinettist Oliver Pashley with Héloïse Werner (soprano), Marianne Schofield (double bass) and Anne Denholm (harp) perform works by Giles Swayne, Ravel, Peter Maxwell Davies, Mira Calix, Emily Hall and Meredith Monk.• £5www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

3 Nov St Andrew’s & St George’s West Church, 13-17 George St, Edinburgh, 7.30pm

THALIA ENSEMBLEReicha and Beethoven: Friendship and Harmony wind quintets by Reicha and Beethoven’s Quintet Op 16 for four winds and fortepiano. Oscar Arguelles (clarinet), Belén Nieto Galán (flute), Aleksandra Mutwicka (oboe), Hylke Rozema (horn), José Rodrigues Gomes (bassoon), Mayumi Eguro (fortepiano). Organised by the Georgian Concert Society.• £5-20www.thequeenshall.net/whats-on/thalia-wind-ensemble-and-fortepiano

6 Nov Bradford Cathedral, Stott Hill, Bradford, 11am

LUCA LUCIANO (CLARINET)Programme to include the world premiere of Luciano’s Fantasia su temi di Vivaldi, Mozart, Weber.• Freewww.lucaluciano.com

13 Nov St John’s, Downshire Hill, Hampstead, London, 7.30pm

COUNTERPOISE AT HAMPSTEAD ARTS FESTIVALProgramme: Kokoschka’s Doll and The Art of Love: Alma Mahler’s Life and Music which features works by Alma and Gustav Mahler, Zemlinsky, Wagner, Webern and David Matthews. Performers: Sir John Tomlinson (bass) and Rozanna Madylus (mezzo-soprano) with Counterpoise: Fenella Humphreys (violin), Kyle Horch (saxophone/clarinet), Deborah Calland (trumpet) and Iain Farrington (piano).• £10-30www.hampsteadartsfestival.com

17 Nov Hoylake Chapel, Station Rd, Hoylake, Wirral, 7.30pm

GILLIAN BLAIR, WIRRAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAGillian Blair performs the Glazunov Saxophone Concerto, conducted by Jonathan Small.www.wirralsymphony.co.uk

18 Nov Steyning Centre, Fletchers Croft, Steyning, 3pm

JESS GILLAM (SAXOPHONE), ZEYNEP ÖZSUCA (PIANO)See 28 Oct.• Non-members £15, members £10, students £2www.steyningmusicsociety.org

19 Nov Culford Room, Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, 2.30pm

MARTIN SPEAKE’S CHARUKESIMartin Speake (alto saxophone). A newly formed project that is a pared-down version of Martin Speake’s previous seven-piece group Fever Pitch. This was formed to reflect Martin’s interest in rhythmic music from around the world including Arabic, Indian and Turkish influences. Part of EFG London Jazz Festival.• Freewww.cadoganhall.com

21 Nov St John’s Church, Spencer Hill, Wimbledon, London, 7.30pm

KYLE HORCH (SAXOPHONE), PIERS LANE (PIANO)Wimbledon Festival Virtuosi at Wimbledon International Music Festival. Concert to include performances of Elena Kats-Chernin’s chamber work The Three Dancers and the saxophone-and-piano recital piece Chant Lyrique Op 69 by Fernande Decruck.• £5-32www.wimbledonmusicfestival.co.uk

24 Nov All Hallows Church, Savernake Road, Hampstead, London, 4pm

MANDY BURVILLE (CLARINET), FITZWILLIAM STRING QUARTETA concert in support of the Alzheimer’s Society and Parkinson’s UK. Mandy Burvill (clarinet) and the Fitzwilliam String Quartet perform Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and give the premiere of Ian Stephens’ Clarinet Quintet.• £10-25www.springheadechoes.co.uk

The Hermes Experiment, 30 October

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DIARY

30 Nov Artrix, Slideslow Drive, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 8pm

ROBERT PLANE (CLARINET) AND GOULD PIANO TRIORavel, Piano Trio in A minor; Watkins, new work for Piano Trio and Clarinet; Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade Op 35 arr Noack for piano trio and clarinet.• £20, concessions £10, under-25s freewww.bromsgrove-concerts.org.uk

2 Dec The Henrietta Barnett School, Central Square, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, 7.30pm

JULIAN BLISS (CLARINET), CARDUCCI QUARTETA recital for Mill Hill Music Club. Brahms, Clarinet Quintet in B minor; Karl Jenkins, String Quartet; Beethoven, Septet in E flat Op 20.• £15www.millhillmusicclub.co.uk

12 Dec Kendal Town Hall, Highgate, Kendal, 1pm

FERIO SAXOPHONE QUARTETTchaikovsky arr Ferio, The Nutcracker Suite; Hugo Reinhart, two movements from Quartet in F minor; J S Bach arr K Tochio, Italian Concerto; Guillermo Lago, With ships the sea was sprinkled far.• £9www.kendalmiddayconcertclub.org

17 Dec 36 Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London W1U 2BP, 1pm

ENSEMBLE ZEFIROMozart Serenade in B flat K361 ‘Gran Partita’.• £16www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

Many more concerts are listed online at www.cassgb/org/events. Listings are updated regularly.

BENSLOW MUSIC TRUSTBenslow Lane, Hitchin, Hertswww.benslowmusic.org

24-27 Sep MIXED CHAMBER MUSIC

Tutors: Steve Bingham, Nigel Clayton, Brenda Stewart, Margaret ArchibaldStandard: upper intermediate, advancedFor flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn players, string players (including double bass) and pianists. Suggest your own repertoire, but what is played will depend on who comes. Strong sight-reading and solid ensemble confidence are required.

4 -6 Jan CLARINET FEST

Tutors: Shea Lolin, Paul Harris, Anthony BaileyStandard: elementary, lower intermediate to advancedAn opportunity for clarinettists of all abilities focus on repertoire from renaissance to contemporary. This course is streamed with workshops and choirs at an appropriate level for all, as well as sessions focusing on technique and musicianship.

11-13 Jan JOHN WHITE’S WIND CHAMBER MUSIC

Standard: upper intermediate, advancedOboist John White leads this course, which will focus on helping wind players improve their chamber music skills. Plenty of music will be provided but feel free to bring your own. Pre-formed groups can be accepted with the agreement of the tutors.

25-27 JanWIND ENSEMBLES WITH THE LONDON MYRIAD

Tutors: Members of the London Myriad EnsembleStandard: upper intermediate, advancedFor pre-formed wind ensembles. Tutors work intensively with each group on a rotational basis for a broad range of input on your chosen repertoire. Applications are welcomed from any configuration of wind or wind and piano ensemble.

25-28 FebCLARINET CHOIR

Tutor: Anthony BaileyStandard: lower/upper intermediate, advancedAnthony Bailey will work through a wide-range of clarinet choir repertoire, both original and arranged. Everything from contrabass to E flat clarinet welcome.

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A round-up of places to play, from single days to regular groups to weeks abroad. Contact each organisation for prices and booking, and see www.cassgb.org for more courses and events later in the year

FLUTES EN VACANCESflutesenvacances.co.uk/wp/saxophone-coursesflutesenvacances.co.uk/wp/clarinet-courses

5 -12 Oct The Hop House, near Sittingbourne, Kent SAXOPHONE BESPOKE COURSE

CLARINET BESPOKE COURSEFor beginner to advanced players. Three- or four-night options.

FURTHER AFIELD…

19-27 Sep Girona, Spain CLARINETS AND SAXOPHONES EN VACANCES

IN GIRONA, SPAINTwo consecutive four-night courses to choose from, half board. Workshop sessions, small mixed ensembles and one-to-one help. All levels.

The Isle of Raasay

RAASAY MUSIC COURSESCourses on the island of Raasay, overlooking the Cuillin Mountains on the Isle of Skye.www.raasaymusiccourses.com

15-19 OctISLE OF RAASAY

AUTUMN CLARINET COURSETutor: Sarah WattsFocus on all aspects of clarinet playing including warm-ups, etudes, exercises, core repertoire classes, orchestral excerpt classes, listening and discovering, clarinet ensembles of all sizes, and participant/tutor concerts. E flat and bass clarinet are welcome for clarinet groups.

SCOTTISH SAXOPHONE ACADEMYwww.scottishsaxophoneacademy.com

7 -9 Sep The Burn, near Edzell, Glenesk, BrechinTHE BURN SAXOPHONE COURSE

Tutors: Sue McKenzie and Mike BroganA weekend of music-making at the Burn, a 17th-century country house near the village of Edzell. Take part in large sax ensembles, quartets, trios and workshops.

HIGHAM HALLHigham Hall College, Bassenthwaite Lake, Cumbriawww.highamhall.com

4 -6 Jan SAXOPHONE (WINTER WEEKEND)

6 -8 Jan SAXOPHONE (WINTER WEEKDAY)

Tutors: Debbie Scherer and Sarah JobsonFor players of more than 18 months. Ensemble coaching and support from two tutors. Groups of varying size, altered at each session. Extensive music library available. Sight-reading skills would be beneficial.

3 -7 Mar WIND SERENADES

Tutors: Laurence PerkinsA course for wind players from Grade 8 to diploma, working in detail on wind chamber repertoire for large and smaller ensembles. There will be an informal concert on the morning of the last day.

JAZZSMARTwww.jazzsmart.com

6 - 7 Oct Durlston Court School, Barton on Sea, Hampshire

DEREK NASH SAXOPHONE WORKSHOPA two-day pop/jazz saxophone and rhythm and blues workshop, with sessions on improvisation and chart reading. An opportunity to work with the leader of the award-winning Sax Appeal and member of the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra.

16-17 Feb Manchester College, ManchesterANDY SCOTT MANCHESTER SAX WEEKEND

Tutor: Andy Scott, with James Rawlinson and Andrew BleeAndy will strike a balance between using written material, using your ears, and embracing a musically open-minded philosophy. Time will be spent as one large group and smaller groups, with a rhythm section joining on Sunday afternoon.

diaryCOURSES

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www.cassgb.org54 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018 www.cassgb.org

MEMBERSHIP UPDATE

54 Clarinet & Saxophone, Autumn 2018

NEW MEMBERS

APPLEBY, Miss Clare-LouiseErdington, Birmingham

BOYD, Mr DavidPaisley, Renfrewshire

BUSHELL, Mrs JackieDidcot, Oxon C CM OM

COTTRELL, Mr LloydRhiwderin, Newport, Gwent C S

CRONIN, Mr Mark AnthonyTawnalary, Donegal Town, Donegal, IRELAND C

DONNELLY, Mr BenActon, London P C S

FAZAKERLEY, Mr StephenTarleton, Preston, Lancashire P C S

MEMBERSHIP UPDATE

Information is provided with members’ consent. To make contact with other members of CASSGB, email [email protected]

AS = alto saxophoneC = clarinetCM = orchestral music

OM = chamber musicP = professionalS = saxophone

JAKEMAN, Mrs AnneFour Elms, Edenbridge, Kent

JEFFERY, Mr ChrisTonbridge, Kent C

KNIGHT, Mrs BarbaraPeasedown St John, Avon C

MANSFIELD, Miss RebeccaBrown Edge, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire C

MCEVOY, Miss ClareNew Malden, Surrey P C

McMAW, Miss LaurenBrampton, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire C S

RICHARDSON, Mrs JanetTonbridge, Kent AS

ROBINSON, Mr MartinWeston, Crewe, Cheshire C S

ROTHWELL, Mrs AnnelouiseSilloth, Cumbria C

STEYN, Dr AnneHolmfirth, West Yorkshire AS

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

ANDERSON, Mrs MollyMoved to: Cullingworth, Bradford, West Yorkshire BROOK, Mr JustinAberdeenshire Instrumental Music Service, Oldmeldrum, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire

COX, Mr AdrianMoved to: Burgess Hill, West Sussex DEGG, Mrs KeriMoved to: South Normanton, Alfreton, Derbyshire

DOWNER, Miss LucyMoved to: Wanstead, London FINCH, Ms HelenMoved to: Gaydon, Warwickshire FOX, Mr LewisMoved to: Denbigh, Clwyd

GILLAM, Miss JessMoved to: Manchester LANDSBOROUGH, Mr IanMoved to: Guildford, Surrey

ROZELAAR, Mrs ElizabethMoved to: St Austell, Cornwall WHITENER, Mrs RebeccaMoved to: Cambuslang, Glasgow XANTHOUDAKIS, Ms ElenaKroma Editions, Flemington, Cambuslang, Glasgow

YOUNGMAN, Mr John FMoved to: Marlborough, Wiltshire

DECEASED MEMBERS

It is with sadness that we report the deaths of:

BRYANT, Mr Kenneth Godalming, Surrey

SMITH, Mr GeorgeFolkestone, Kent

Playdays16 Sep The Centre, Alpha

Road, BirchingtonEAST KENT CLARINET BAND PLAYDAYExplore music for clarinet choir. All welcome.• £[email protected] 846427

29 Sep Memorial Hall, 301 High Road,

Trimley St Martin, SuffolkSAXOPHONE SESSIONSDirected by Adrian Budgen. Workshop sessions aimed at developing ensemble playing with good music written specifically for saxes. Free parking, refreshments included.• £[email protected] 726 426www.packapunch.co.uk/workshops

13 Oct Thornbury Baptist Church,

Gillingstool, Thornbury, South GloucestershireTHORNBURY CLARINET CHOIR WORKSHOPWith tutor Kieron Anderson, this playday is open to adult Grade 6 or equivalent clarinettists. Prior booking essential.• £[email protected]

13 Oct The Arch, Station Lane, Chandler’s Ford,

Eastleigh, HampshireSAXOPHONE WORKSHOPSaxophone day with Gerard McChrystal. Further details from Sarah Finch.• £25www.sarahfinch.pro

21 Oct Great Kingshill Village Hall,

BuckinghamshireKINGSHILL CLARINET CHOIR PLAYDAYWith tutor Stephanie Reeve, this playday is open to adult Grade 5+ musicians. Prior booking required.• £[email protected]

28 Oct Stapleford Granary, Bury Road,

Stapleford, CambridgeWOODWIND PLAYDAYWith tutor Stephanie Reeve, this day is open to woodwind and horn players of all ages, from Grade 3 to Grade 7.• £45www.staplefordgranary.org.uk

11 Nov Broughton St Mary’s Parish Church, 12

Bellevue Crescent, Edinburgh THE BIG BLAW!Join us for an afternoon of playing in a large sax ensemble. Music will be provided. A fun afternoon of playing, with tips on reading, breathing, tone and technique. Grades 3 to 7.• £25www.scottishsaxophoneacademy.com

• high quality quarterly magazine

• free access to sheet music library

• reduced entry to CASSGB events

• offers on concert tickets and more

• free classified ads service

• apply for funding for your projects

• support your single-reed community

Presidents: Janet Hilton and Richard InghamVice presidents: Rob Buckland, Paul Harvey, Charles Hine, Kyle Horch, Andrew Marriner, Linda MerrickEditor of Clarinet & Saxophone : Chris Walters, [email protected] director: Sarah Watts, [email protected] director: Richard Slack, [email protected] and Clarinet & Saxophone reviews and diary editor: Stephanie Reeve, [email protected] director and website editor: Andrew Smith, [email protected], 08456 440187Secretary: Tracey Connell, [email protected] media director: Michael Pearce, [email protected] directors: Adrian Connell, [email protected]; John MacKenzie, [email protected]; James Rae, [email protected] enquires to CASSGB should be first addressed to the secretary:

Tracey Connell, [email protected], 01322 290 422 | 07753 315 218

Join the Clarinet and Saxophone Society at CASSGB.org or scan the QR code

JOIN US TODAYSTUDENT MEMBERSHIPJUST

£12

Back issues of Clarinet & Saxophone are available to members from the membership director priced £6 or from cassgb.org

The Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain (CASSGB) was founded in 1976 for the benefit of everyone who has an interest in the clarinet or saxophone and their repertoire: teachers, students, professional or amateur players, manufacturers and composers. The society has members in over 35 countries. The Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain is a company limited by guarantee registered in England (No. 3010228), whose registered office is at 48 Henniker Point, Leytonstone Road, London, E15 1LQ.


CLARINETS

Boosey and Hawkes 1010 A clarinet with Acton vent mechanism. Serial No 488544 complete with double case. £500. Contact [email protected] or 07914 887292 (Cornwall).

Simple system clarinets. Two clarinets both in need of some attention and restoration. Offers accepted. Contact [email protected] or 07914 887292 (Cornwall).

Noblet clarinet case. New Noblet rucksack-style clarinet case which will fit a C clarinet. £30. Contact [email protected] or 07914 887292 (Cornwall).

Single clarinet case. Old style wooden single clarinet case for B flat or A. £10. For more details and photos please contact [email protected] or 07914 887292 (Cornwall).

Gervase de Peyer’s Luis Rossi clarinets are for sale, on behalf of Katia de Peyer. These large-bore instruments were bought directly from Luis Rossi in the late 1990s. They are in excellent condition

having been recently overhauled in our workshops. They are equipped with several barrels of different length and your choice of two mouthpieces from Gervase’s selection of Eaton mouthpieces, in a custom double case. These instruments have a lovely, fairly light sound, in some ways reminiscent of the pre-war Boosey & Hawkes instruments that Gervase played from his earliest days through to the late 1960s. He played them for some of his last series of recordings on his own Radiant Mastery label. The price is £6000, payable directly to Katia de Peyer. Contact via www.eatonclarinets.com for more details.

Boosey and Hawkes vintage clarinets in good playing condition. Symphony 1010 B flat, SN 509754: £750. Pair of Imperial 926s, SNs 185380 and 272189: £1,250. Contact: 01938 553638.

SAXOPHONES

Yamaha YSS-475 soprano saxophone. One owner from new. Very good condition. Complete with mouthpiece, sling (not Yamaha sling) and case. £700. Tel 0114 2362191 or email [email protected]

Yanagisawa TWO37 Elite model tenor saxophone. Solid silver, played by Snake Davis! This beautiful sax was loaned to Snake Davis by Yanagisawa for him to decide on the specification of a personalised horn that Yanagisawa have made for him. The upgraded replacement for the T9937 series, this TWO37 silver model is an instrument for an accomplished player. It delivers a superb tonal range with unrivalled depth and flexibility. It also benefits from the WO series re-engineered bore and tone holes and redesigned core brass material. This model also has many upgraded features exclusive to the WO series such as newly designed front F keys, ride side keys and right pinky key. Please note there is no mouthpiece included with this sax, but we have many available to choose from. Two-year guarantee. £9,360. Contact Richard at [email protected]

WANTED

Boosey & Hawkes Edgware Clarinet in A. Wooden instrument wanted. Would consider a pair. Contact Jane on 016973 42158 or [email protected]

CLASSIFIED ADS

A free service to CASSGB members (non-members pay 75p per word). Submit an ad through www.cassgb.org or email details to [email protected]

NEWS


CLASSIFIEDS

INSPIRATIONS


Back in the middle ages, church leaders, architects, stonemasons and choirmasters knew a thing or two about inspiration. They competed to build higher and higher, or closer to heaven; to incorporate as much artwork, sculpture and stained glass as their benefactors were willing to pay for; and to sing glorious choral anthems, harnessing the soaring voices of young boys, which resulted in magnificent works like Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere. Anyone who has heard Harry Christopher’s The Sixteen sing Miserere in a cathedral space cannot fail to have been moved. Among the members of The Sixteen is the soprano Grace Davidson, whom I had the pleasure of hearing along with the rest of Christian Forshaw’s quartet, The Sanctuary Ensemble, when they delivered an evening concert in Southwell Minster some years back.

On paper, the announcement of a recital by a saxophonist, organist, percussionist and soprano singer doesn’t convey much excitement. Furthermore, as The Times critic Geoff Brown put it, ‘You can buy Christian Forshaw’s music on CD but it gives no indication of the thrills when his liquid saxophone, Grace Davidson’s pure soprano voice plus a church organ and sundry percussion instruments float through a resonating cathedral.’ I’ll go a stage further: there is no more inspirational sound than that of the quartet in full flight. Christian, no matter what size of saxophone he is playing (soprano, alto or baritone), delivers a gorgeous, pure sonority harnessed to the tremendously wide harmonic combinations available from the organ and voice. For the technically minded I should add that the Forshaw group appeared at Southwell with a sound engineer who, during the afternoon rehearsal, made sure that stage microphones and speakers at the rear of the audience maintained a balanced reception for all attendees. For me the performance was truly inspirational – and the church was packed.

Christian, born in Harrogate, Yorkshire and a former chorister, studied saxophone with John Harle at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and ultimately became a virtuoso soloist with various groups including the Delta Sax Quartet. He is now professor of saxophone at the Guildhall. With a lifelong interest in church music, his first CD Sanctuary was published in 2004 (Quartz QTZ 2009) giving rise to the naming of his quartet, The Sanctuary Ensemble. This was followed in 2007, 2008 and 2012 by Renouncement, Midwinter and Sounds of Solace, all produced and published by Christian’s own label Integra Records. At the time of writing, all four CDs are available from Amazon to buy, from Spotify to stream and, for some tracks, on YouTube.

Sanctuary with Aimee Green (soprano voice) and the choir of Kings College London is, in two words, singularly beautiful, with outstanding soprano and alto sax playing, some of which is improvised. Its contents

are all arrangements by Christian: ‘Mortal Flesh’, ‘Improvisation and Chorale on J‘ain la flour’, ‘Love Unknown’, ‘Down Ampney’, a choral ‘Magnificat’ with some splendid harmonisation, ‘Nunc Dimittis’ and ‘Unknown Love’. The last three are Christian’s own compositions. The album is very moving and would surely make Adolphe Sax extremely proud even though, at this juncture, the project was essentially experimental.

Renouncement with Grace Davidson digs deeper into the ethereal impact of church music, delivered by an unconventional combination of voice, saxophone, pipe organ and percussion (with the justifiable inclusion from time to time of a synthesiser). Again, adaptations of ecclesiastical and classical composers with Christian’s own compositions make for a haunting and captivating recital. Midwinter acknowledges that Christmas-tide and carol melodies

lend themselves to inspirational treatment from the Sanctuary Ensemble, especially when recorded in a cathedral environment. Songs of Solace is Christian’s musical response to a book detailing the harrowing events following the London 7/7 bombing episode. This album is the most recent recording from The Sanctuary Ensemble.

What the album liner notes for all four of Christian’s CDs omit is that the magic of their performance flows from three sources: compositional and arranging talent, the performance and/or recording acoustic environment, and most of all the musicality of the material. By musicality I mean the presence of all its components: sonority, melody, harmony, structure and rhythm. The Sanctuary Ensemble has musicality in spades! n

Christian, no matter what size of saxophone he is playing, delivers a gorgeous, pure sonority

Kenneth Morris profiles Christian Forshaw – saxophonist, composer and leader of The Sanctuary EnsembleSongs

of Solace

Christian Forshaw

A perfectmatch between richness of tone & ease of response!

John HELLIWELLSupertramp

“ Axos puts out what I put into it! It gets a very good and powerful sound. It takes whatever you can give it. It’s got a good fat sound!”

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Henri SELMER Paris unveils, with its new brand SeleS, a never before seen Alto saxophone called Axos.

It takes whatever you can give it. It’s got a good fat sound!”

par

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BBC Young Jazz Musician of the YearBritish Jazz Awards ‘Rising Star’ Winner

and proud Yanagisawa artist: A991B, T991B, SC991B

soprano reinvented

Yanagisawa W.O.Series SopranosImproved Materials, Redesigned bore taper, Repositioned tone holes, Relocated right pinky key, Adjusted left palm keys, Nickel silver G rod, New neck plate (Elite Series), Newly designed case with backstraps.

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Alan Lucas - Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain

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Transcript of Alan Lucas - Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain