Klarinet Archive - Posting 000183.txt from 2009/10

From: kurtheisig@-----.net
Subj: Re: [kl] Coolest
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:33:56 -0400

Pictures of old primitive boxwood clarinets, some with ivory rings.

One of my students was band director and general music teacher in an elementary school in a heavily minority district and brought in the film the Benny Goodman Story. She would play a few minutes of it each week in all of the classes,talking about this poor minority kid that had to play clarinet to help support his family at age 14. Soon Benny Goodman was the hero of the school, for both the kids and the teachers.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Thiel <mark.thiel@-----.com>
>Sent: Oct 17, 2009 5:44 PM
>To: klarinet@-----.org
>Subject: [kl] Coolest
>
>
>Dear List,
>
>I recently began teaching beginning clarinet to kids about 10 years old in an early morning before-school program. (A bit of a change for me since I last taught a few decades ago and that was calculus.) Anyway I decided that I would have a session every week while the kids were putting their clarinets away on "Why the clarinet is the coolest instrument in the world". I intend to play examples of my reasons. Anyway, I need you all to come up with more points for my list. If you DON'T think that the clarinet is the coolest, I highly respect your opinion -- but don't want to hear it. I also fully expect many of you to get sidetracked with the issue of whether the term "cool" is still cool --especially among 10-year-olds. Anyway, here is my list so far:
>
>
>Wide range -- or "it has a lot of notes" This is the only one I've done so far. I played chromatically E to C and had them count 1 to 45 along with me.
>
>Wide dynamic range -- or "plays loud and quiet". I guess I'll just play some song and get loud and them fade to niente.
>
>has a good family - I'll bring in all the clarinets I own or can borrow and play and do a bit of something typical -- a little Eulenspiegel (no , I WON'T be apologizing for not having a D clarinet), the bass lick from Grofe Canyon, etc.
>
>Plays many kinds of music -- I guess I can play something classical, fake my way through a little, Dixieland, Jazz, Klezmer. I've no idea what to play in the way of Pop or other genres.
>
>Can sound like different animals or whatever
> Cat from Peter & Wolf
> Cuckoo in Pastorale,etc. (that would be a good trivia question -- how many examples of the clarinet Cuckoo can you name?)
> Rogue in Eulenspiegel?
> there must be other examples ----- ????
>
>Range of tone color -- not sure how to go about this -- can't be too subtle.
>
>I anticipate excellent additions and suggestions from all of you.
>
>Mark Thiel
>
>
>
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