Klarinet Archive - Posting 000794.txt from 1999/04

From: Edinger/Gilman <wde1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] speaking of diaphragms
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 11:28:51 -0400

I posted a few days ago asking for experience or knowledge on when you
can start playing after major abdominal (abominable?) surgery. Now my
surgeon says it will take 4-6 weeks of rest, and no clarinet-playing for
six weeks. This seems excessive to me; I suspect he isn't a wind
player. After all, he didn't say anything about not SINGING for six
weeks, and controlled singing seems to me (admittedly a completely
untrained singer) to be very, very similar to playing a woodwind as far
as muscular tensioning. Some of you on the list might be familiar with
the physiology of the solar plexus during clarinet playing - Diane
Karius, Steve Goldman, Robert Howe - do you have any arguments either
way on this? We have a major concert six weeks and two days after my
surgery is to take place, and I'd rather not have to temporarily switch
to percussion. The action during playing seems to me to be basically
isotonic - I just don't see how playing the clarinet would be all that
much of a strain on abdominal muscles (or forming scar tissue, I guess)
after, say two weeks of abstension. (And speaking of abstension, I
don't want to even THINK about the other things I can't do for six
weeks.)

Bill Edinger

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