Klarinet Archive - Posting 000644.txt from 1999/09

From: Ken Wolman <Ken.Wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] re: Where to find string players
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 11:19:29 -0400

reedman@-----.com wrote:
>
> Subject: Re: [kl]how about where to find musicians? In a message dated
> 9/21/99 9:16:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> el2@-----.
>
> ---------------------------
>
> But she was looking for string players, not winds ;)
> 10 Worst rep. list to post later today. Hey, maybe I'll put those
> Accompaniments on sale - at a discount ;)

Ha. Don't laugh at this next part. But check the NY subways. You
could assemble a symphony orchestra from some of the people who play in
the trains. Oh, yeah, there are the real dogs, too: the guy who
imitates Jimi Hendrix or Muddy Waters, the guy who sits on the street
near Times Square and blats into a saxophone.

Then there are the virtuosi, sorted unnecessarily by ethnicity except to
underline the kind of town New York can be:

- The Chinese guy who plays on something that looks like a hammer
dulcimer.
- The old Jewish guy with who wears a kippah, stands on the 47th Street
platform, and plays klezmer to die for on a Albert system clarinet. He
told me he got it from his father who played it before him, and he's
passing it onto his grandson.
- The black sax player who got on the downtown No. 1 local one evening
with a tenor horn that looked like he'd used it to fight off muggers. I
thought "Oh, s--t, here we go again" until the guy played melody lines
and riffs that would not have embarrassed Sonny Rollins.
- Most fun of all, the Waspy-looking violinist who does a whole romantic
act, kind of a male Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg who does everything but
fall onto the tracks while performing. He mainly works the 34th Street
station on the N/R line. He wears a white ruffled shirt costume shirt,
deliberately tight dark trousers, wears his hair like Franz Liszt, and
plays violin solos with an MMO accompaniment. He plays
brilliantly--just gorgeous tone and technique. We got into a
conversation one morning because he played a lovely "Meditation" from
Massenet's Thais, and I mentioned just having heard an arrangement
played by Eugene Rousseau on the soprano sax with the U of Indiana
Woodwind Band. He seemed enthralled by the idea.

Some of these people--notably the Chinese dulcimer player and the showy
violinist--have their own CDs for sale.

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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