Klarinet Archive - Posting 000497.txt from 2004/11

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Marine Band
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 08:05:05 -0500


Jim Lytthans wrote,
>I had the great fortune to hear the Marine Band
>"The President's Own" perform tonight in Cerritos,
>CA. What a wonderful group, as always. Jihoon
>Chung, one of their clarinetists, played a transcription
>by Tom Knox of the last movement of the Tchaikovsky
>Violin Concerto.... beautifully, and from memory. He
>then did that wonderful klezmer-like solo by John
>Williams, from the film "The Terminal". I had the
>opportunity to hear Jihoon play the Tchaikovsky at
>the last ICA 'Fest in MD, in an arrangement for clarinet
>choir and solo. Tonight's accompaniment was with a
>small wind ensemble without clarinets. Much more
>effective, since the solo line was not buried in all the
>clarinet mush.

I hope I can hear that version of the Tchaikovsky some time. The Marine
Band and the Navy Band are the two best bands I've ever heard. They're
local bands for those of us in the Washington, D. C. area, where they play
regularly. (The Navy Band sponsors the International Saxophone Symposium
every winter at George Mason U. in Virginia, btw, an outstanding event.)
The audience can count on a first-rate performance every time.

I'd never heard the Marines' clarinet choir alone before this year's
ClarinetFest. The clarinet choir sounded surprisingly appropriate playing
orchestra repertory, although the concerto movement did sound a little
strange to me with that instrumentation -- partly because the original
version is familiar. I'm also not normally a big enthusiast for pulling
isolated movements out of concertos, but Jihoon Chang played the solo part
in the Tchaikovsky so brilliantly at the ClarinetFest that he made me wish
Tchaikovsky had written a clarinet concerto. I wish a lot of great
composers had written clarinet concertos, including more of them written
originally for clarinet and *band* rather than orchestra. It's a shame
that there has to be such an emphasis on transcriptions in the clarinet
repertory, but without the transcriptions, I guess clarinet players would
run out of concertos awfully fast.

Lelia Loban
Cthulhu cultists support school prayer!

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