Klarinet Archive - Posting 000799.txt from 1998/02

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Introduction
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:09:53 -0500

I'm going to be doing a lot of lurking here, but I thought I would put a
foot forward and introduce myself.

I am coming back to playing the clarinet for the first time since I started
college in 1961. I played--reasonably well--through Junior High and High
School, then gave it up for a whole bunch of probably neurotic reasons. I
was surprised to discover I can still produce a pretty nice tone on the
instrument I've got (more below), and I remember just about all the
fingerings, but need to get my wind back, or really, I've got to relearn
how to breathe with respect to the instrument. Of course I've also got to
get back into the whole world of technique.

First instrument I owned was some brand I don't remember that I don't think
was real wood. Then in about 1991, a co-worker asked me if I'd like to
inherit her brother's clarinet. Huh? Her kid brother (age 36) had died of
a brain tumor, a really sad situation. She brought the instrument in for
me to look at: a Selmer Q-series Centered Tone, made as I learned, in 1957,
and that some dealer had valued at about $1300 back around 1989. I was
flabbergasted. I didn't remember much about playing at that point, but I
DID remember that the two great names in professional-level clarinets were
Buffet and Selmer, and that this was one of those top-of-the-line instruments.

She was giving me the instrument because, she said, she could not bear to
sell it and wanted it to go to someone who might appreciate it's
non-monetary value.

The instrument needed work that I never gave it: it had a really
tubby-sounding middle register, probably because the keys and pads were
shot, but I couldn't be sure. Finally, over Christmas, I brought it to a
repairman who charged me $138 for new pads and a thorough cleaning and
adjustment. I went into one of the practice rooms and the tone that came
out of this thing was unlike anything I'd ever heard outside of a
recording. NO problem with the register break between Bb and B, a seamless
tone.

So I figured "This is a sign." So was buying Stoltzman's "Aria" CD: I am
serious opera freak. So now I'm back, 2 days short of turning 54, to doing
kid-stuff: scales, arpeggios, relearning the fingering chart, playing some
of the arias *I* remember just to reconnect my ear (which is still pretty
good) to fingerings that are coming back.

Big danger...I work right around the corner from remaining music stores on
West 48th Street in Manhattan. Lead us not into temptation:-).

Love it!

Ken Wolman

"The East River. But it was not a river at all. Merely a column of water
connecting the upper harbor to the Sound. Yet everyone called it a river.
They chose not to think about it. They clung to the surface of things."
--Peter Quinn, "Banished Children of Eve"
Ken Wolman kwolman@-----.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649