Klarinet Archive - Posting 000548.txt from 2005/06

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] metal clarinets
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:06:40 -0400

At 08:30 AM 6/27/2005, Bill Hausmann wrote:
>>Thad Jones and Percy Grainger alone...
>
>But how many school bands are actually playing that material? A few or
>the biggest and best, perhaps, and even then, they may skip the soprano
>parts in the Grainger for lack of anyone who owns a soprano, or the
>soprano is school-owned and does not travel home. So, yeah, maybe
>"nobody" was a bit strong, but it is still a fairly rare occurrence.

You might be surprised. More and more big band and wind ensemble music is
requiring the soprano saxophone and the schools are playing this literature
(whether or not they are playing it well is an entirely different matter).
Not just the biggest and best, but it certainly does depend on affluence,
geography, and regional support for the arts. I'm told such programs are
common in New York state and Texas, for example. I see them often enough in
Northern New Jersey and Northern California such that I would not call them
rare. I am now quite close to nit picking on semantics, however, sorry. It
is also interesting to note that there clearly is a burgeoning market in
quality intermediate soprano saxophones (the YSS-475 being, by far, the
best deal going, in my experience).

To get back on-topic, my experience has been that it as almost equally as
likely that a high school jazz band saxophone student will play clarinet
parts on soprano saxophone as they will on clarinet. I even see this in
collegiate ensembles. A "metal" clarinet, indeed. <sigh>

-Adam

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