Klarinet Archive - Posting 000211.txt from 1998/09

From: CmdrHerel@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Stoltzman Concert
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 22:53:04 -0400

In a message dated 9/6/98 3:31:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, DGross1226@-----.com
writes:

<< There's a great bio of Richard Stoltzman in today's Los Angeles Times.
He's
performing this coming Wednesday evening at 8:30 p.m. at the Hollywood Bowl.
Others in the ensemble include his wife (violin), two children (piano and
keyboards), plus percussion, string bass, and members of the Angeles String
Quartet. The program includes "Maid With the Flaxen Hair" (Debussy), "Suite"
(Mihaud), plus others.

However, I have a question for those who know him, or have gotten close
enough
to see his clarinet "up close and personal." The B/W photo in the LA Times
shows him with his clarinet which is sporting a "white" barrel. Anyone know
what the barrel material is and who made it?

Just curious. >>

I have a barrel that was finished about a month after Stoltzman's was, and boy
does it get a lot of attention!

They're Opperman barrels and are cut from forty year old boxwood. In color,
they're a pale yellow, kind of like the color of finished pine.

Opperman likes the boxwood because of it's final stability - meaning that
after it's all done warping and changing, it'll remain stable for "fifty
years" he says. (And of course because it's beautiful.)

I like it for the beautiful sound I get from it. And okay, it looks pretty
too... Although one day I was sitting around with my new boxwood barrel on my
new horn with a string ligature on my mouthpiece and a colleague said, "That
thing looks like you bought it at a junk sale."

Teri Herel

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