Klarinet Archive - Posting 000032.txt from 1999/08

From: Ken Wolman <Ken.Wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] What goes around ... comes back!
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 19:54:28 -0400

charette@-----.org wrote:

> Well, the middle son, a jazz trumpeter, told me about some French
> singer he had heard whose phrasing was impeccable & dynamics
> perfect for whatever she was singing. He was going to buy some CDs
> of her work. I did the old Dad thing: "Yeah, that's nice." and didn't
> hear much more about it. He went off & did his thing.
>
> I was vacuuming his room on Saturday (he's away at camp) and saw the
> CD covers. Now I know who it was that impressed him:
>
> Edith Piaf
>
> Sometimes the kids are smarter than their parents.
>
> Good music will never die.

My older son, the one who just turned 21, had the musical urge largely
knocked out of him (see below), but he still knows something when he
hears it. In his senior year in high school he had a speaking part in
Carousel. The guy who played Billy Bigelow was a friend of his, but he
could not sing his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag.

When I was driving Jake up to college, I threw a tape of Carousel into
the player. Specifically, I played Samuel Ramey singing Billy's
"Soliloquy." Jake listening in silence, then at the end said "Holy
shit."

Yeah, he surprises me. Years before...he was maybe 8 or 9...we were
erranding on a Saturday morning and I had WBGO, the Newark jazz station,
on in the car. They played back-to-back versions of "Body and Soul."
First Coleman Hawkins, then (I think) Lester Young, then Morgana King
singing it. King was part of the way through when we got where we were
going and I went to switch off the engine. "No, no, leave it on!" my
son cried.

He had the musical stuffing knocked out of my by that worst of all
influences, a rigidly bad teacher. In the fifth grade he expressed a
desire to play the sax. The teacher insisted that he learn to play
clarinet first. Jake didn't WANT to play the clarinet, he wanted to
play the sax. I know all the technical arguments in the world for
training someone on the harder instrument first, but we are not talking
a pro here...and he wouldn't have been the first person, I suspect, to
transition to the clarinet after learning the saxophone.

This same teacher tried to get my younger son to give up the trumpet
because he couldn't reach high notes. He suggested the trombone. My
ex-wife, God bless her, said to the teacher "Maybe that's because you
don't know how to teach him to play the high notes." The teacher shut
up, Ben became good enough to play first trumpet through Jr High and his
first year of high school, then voluntarily switched over to the
baritone horn.

And this is the kid who discovered not Mel Torme but some of his
parents' secret passions, old time rock 'n' roll, after denouncing it as
"old people music":-). Well, not OLD...but a kid who learned all the
lyrics to the Beatles "White Album" has some interesting tastes.

He's also the one who would wander into the room while I was watching a
Met opera broadcast, sit down and watch it with me, and ask questions.

Who knows where our kids take US?

Ken

--
Ken Wolman dbtrader Deutsche Bank, N.A.
1251 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10019 212-469-6494
Teach someone to fish and you have helped them survive another day.
Teach them to surf the Net and they won't bother you for weeks.

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