Klarinet Archive - Posting 000514.txt from 1998/04

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: Music and Science
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 11:44:39 -0400

At 09:51 AM 4/10/98 EDT, you wrote:
>This is a fascinating topic.
>
>I am a Ph.D. (food & resource chemistry and chemical engineering) by
education
>and a computer journalist by trade (with 500 or so published articles in the
>past 15 years). I also worked in medical research and teaching.
>
>BUT clarinets always have been and remain my first love. I started playing in
>fourth grade...nearly 40 years ago (ugh).
>
>Cindy

Odd backgrounds? I've got a Ph.D. in English Literature but never really
taught full-time. I loved music from the day I laughed and cried as a
little kid when my parents played Peter & The Wolf for me. So who knew it
was Prokofiev?:-)

For awhile wanting to sing lived side-by-side with clarinet playing, and
both were replaced by my attempts to play the guitar (hey, it was the
Sixties...) and sing with it: I turned into a Folkie, in other words. I
would not say the clarinet was a first love, except that when I got my
hands on the instrument again, it DID feel like running into an old
girlfriend you'd slept with 30 years ago, and both of you realized all the
old electricity was still there.... In the meantime, I spent years
listening to symphonic and operatic repertoire, and a rather good ability
to play by ear has given me some good starting places for this rekindled
affair with the clarinet.

Ken

"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