Klarinet Archive - Posting 000087.txt from 2006/05

From: Tski1128@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Klezmer Clarinet Solo with Winds ensembles (Full BAnd)
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:11:52 -0400

In a message dated 5/11/2006 4:50:40 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
moshe_berlin@-----.net writes:
I don't believe on playing klezmer with notes, or with written arrangements.
Real klezmer playing is by reading the faces of the audience and the
players instead of reading what the notes tells.
The notes themselves should represent only the sketch of the piece, and the
rest must be played by (and with) heart.

Moshe (Moussa) Berlin

I don't believe in reading the audience's faces while playing! Watching them
sure, but they aren't going to give me any information that's going to make
a iota of difference in my interpretation. I am totally down with the concept
that solos are performed better when the soloist is performing from memory,
we would most likely find that this would not be the case with a 60 piece
band or orchestra. If I'm working with my rhythm section, We'll sit down and
play for hours the tunes we know from memory. If I'm performing Buccolique, I
want the chart and I damn sure want the pianist to have one!

There are often postings, concerning Klezmer music, that try to convince
people that klezmer music is in someway different then any other type of music.
There are some stylistic differences surely, but the same elements make a
performance sublime, or suck. You have to know the music, have the appropriate
tone color, have the requisite technique and have an opinion to state! If the
it's what YOU think the composer was really trying to say, take a stand and
play it like that. If you think you have an idea on how Naftule Brandwein,
would have played a frielach after his forth scotch, live on the edge take a
stand and give me your opinion. What I hate is boring, non point of view
performances by clarinetists that think clarinets should sound like korg tuners!

But that's just my opinion

Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with
Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently
by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in
Clarinet performance

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