Klarinet Archive - Posting 000166.txt from 1999/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Re C clarinet
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 14:57:35 -0400

I must be out of it. The idea that the use of a C clarinet should
be avoided for fear of social pressure caused by the presumption that
one does so because one cannot transpose is so convoluted (even more so
than this sentence) as to leave me struggling to come to the surface.

I don't even know how to combat such foolishness. I'm getting old.

And this very thing once happened to me, though I did not find out about
it for a long time. I was hired to play a rehearsal of Beethoven's
Missa Solemnis (orchestral rehearsal only - no performance) in the
living room of a very rich New Jersey lady by the name of Charlotte
Bergen. Her house was big enough to put an orchestra in the
living room! She hired this orchestra to learn how to conduct the
work which she finally did in NY with most of the NY Philharmonic
that she had hired out of her own pocket, and she got good reviews
as a conductor all of which shows how little reviewers know about
anything. Anyway ...

Since I knew the music and had played it, I showed up with 3 clarinets,
one in C. Bill Shadel was playing first and I second. At the
break, the lady conductor asked me why I had 3 clarinets and when
I proudly told her that one was a C as requested by the music, she
thanked me and I was dismissed from the gig after that. There were
lots more rehearsals but I was not invited to participate and I did not
know why.

Well, this fruitcake of a conductor called one of NY's most important
clarinetists and asked him why I needed a C clarinet and this SCHMUCK
told her to fire me because it was obvious I could not transpose. And
I was fired from the gig because of this mental midget (but wonderful
clarinet player) was using the same kind of logic that was reported
on this list just the other day.

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

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