Klarinet Archive - Posting 000017.txt from 2010/02

From: Sean Osborn <feanor33@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Buck up friends. It's going to get worse
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:21:42 -0500

Wow! Thanks for sharing, Dan!

They are very impressive. There are definitely some aspects of
Japanese musical education that are worth emulating. However, let me
tell you a story from when I was travelin in Japan in 2007 performing
Daugherty's "Brooklyn Bridge."

We were preforming with our host schools and at festivals with
multiple schools - junior high, high school, and
university. Everyone played from memory. I got to work with several
clarinet sections. Everyone from about 7th-8th grade on could play
the Weber Concertino from memory without any mistakes. That was very
impressive. However, when they got to be seniors in high school,
still the only solo they knew was the Weber Concertino from
memory. They never learned anything else, and their interpretation
never matured. In fact, their interpretation was never allowed to
mature. When I would try to get them to change a crescendo into a
diminuendo, they couldn't. When I asked them what kind of expression
they thought should go in a particular passage, none of them could
answer and many didn't understand the question, even with a
translator. Weber was just how it was done, immutable, unchangable,
impersonal.

I'm not saying that this is how those kids in the video are, but that
may be the only piece they know, and the've spent two years learning
it. Even if that's true, it's impressive. There are some aspects of
western music education that are also great.

Cheers,

Sean Osborn
www.osbornmusic.com

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