Klarinet Archive - Posting 000193.txt from 1994/07

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Sad information
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 1994 21:37:54 -0400

I regret to have to announce the recent death of NY clarinetist Irving Neidich,
father of the remarkable Charles Neidich, a really superior clarinetist (in
my opinion).

Irving and I were friends many years ago and he was the very best C clarinet
transposer I ever heard. Nothing stopped him. We would play string quartets
on clarinets and preferred to read them as is. Irving insisted that we
transpose them to achieve the correct key characteristic. He was remarkable.

Whenever we played we always used one of the houses or apartments of one of
the players. That meant that every month or two we wound up at Irving's
home where his infant son, Charlie, would come in and crawl to the center of
our quartet's group. He would sit there for an hour listening to us play,
probably critically from the character of his playing these days.

Irving used to play with the Goldman Band and was with them for years, probably
going back to the days of Edwin Franko Goldman himself.

Irving studied with both Daniel Bonade and Simeon Bellison. I believe that
Bellison was his first teacher and taught him how to put a clarinet
together. I had not seen Irving for the last 20 years or so, but I would
think of him whenever I heard his son's glorious playing and wonder to what
extent our quartet influenced Charlie to play the clarinet. Whatever influence
we had, it was not we who gave him his extraordinary gifts. It was his
father.

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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