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Author: TheClarinetKid
Date: 2016-06-11 04:37
Dear Clarinettos!
I have been asked to play at a retirement village and I want to lighten up the things. Can anyone suggest me a classic 1930s or 40s clarinet classic? Jazz classic Goodman style? Boogie woogie bugle boy is good but no clarinet arrangements....
-TheClarinetKid
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Buffet Crampon E11 Clarinet (French Buffet)
Buffet Crampon 'Vintage' R13 Clarinet
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2016-06-12 08:56
Hi Kid,
Artie Shaw's clarinet concerto is sold as a transcription of one version of his solo. Also, you could probably find lead sheets for something like Begin the Beguine, Stardust, etc. (Hoagy Carmichael stuff).
Just a thought. Good luck, and have fun!
Fuzzy
EDIT: I wouldn't trap myself into just non-pop tunes though. Songs like "Ice Cream" and "You Are My Sunshine" etc. can help brighten a mood. They're songs no one really sings, but everyone recognizes (young and old alike).
Post Edited (2016-06-12 08:59)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-06-12 10:39
Just as you shouldn't underestimate kids, you shouldn't underestimate elders. Even if their bodies have given out, their minds will be sharp. And for those whose minds are failing, their enjoyment of music remains.
By all means play popular songs from 90 years back, but some Mozart will give as much pleasure as it ever did. The Brahms Lullaby may put a few to sleep, but will bring tears from the rest.
Listen to transcriptions of the old songs from 78s to learn to give the audience what they remember and expect. Almost everything is on YouTube now.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-06-12 16:35
In 2014, I spent about three months living with my dad until he recovered enough from an injury to take care of himself in his independent living apartment. This retirement community also has assisted living apartments. Dad's still got all his marbles. Well, okay, age happens, so maybe his IQ of 165 has dropped. Maybe it's down to 164 now. Maybe even 163. Whatever -- we had some fun smirking at each other behind the backs of the well-intentioned medical care professionals who spoke baby-talk to him and otherwise patronized him.
I noticed another form of patronizing behavior in the entertainment offered by musicians who performed in the common-room nearly every day. Nearly all of them were volunteers who played extremely well, but they played almost nothing except light pop tunes from pre-WWII days. During my entire three months of living there, I only heard one classical music performance! Quite a few of the residents complained among themselves about the entertainment. I recall one of Dad's poker buddies grumbling, "Just once, couldn't somebody play some Beethoven instead of all this damned Frank Sinatra crap?"
[I came back to fix the date on this post -- possibly a senior moment myself, when I mistakenly typed 1994! I stayed with Dad in 2014.]
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2016-06-13 18:17)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2016-06-12 17:27
Lelia Loban wrote:
> I noticed another form of patronizing behavior in the
> entertainment offered by musicians who performed in the
> common-room nearly every day. ... I recall one of
> Dad's poker buddies grumbling, "Just once, couldn't somebody
> play some Beethoven instead of all this damned Frank Sinatra
> crap?"
>
Yes, I agree. Don't underestimate the variety of interest you'll find in a retirement residence. It's a big mistake to think of the people living there as a monolithic type who all share the same music (or any other) interests. Unless it's strictly a nursing home, the people listening to you are probably not ill, not necessarily even infirm. They had many different interests before they moved there and their interests still lie on a continuum. The best program is one that's varied. Some will be musically trained (I have run into retired professional musicians occasionally in those communities) and will respect a good performance no matter what you play. Some will find classical transcriptions welcome. Some will enjoy hearing pop music from the pre-rock era. Some may appreciate hearing a Beatles or other later pop or Broadway tunes. There may be a few residents in wheel chairs with attendants who can barely hear and don't really care what you play - they may just enjoy break in the monotony of their routines.
I'd say the important thing is to keep the individual selections short and vary the style as widely as you can. Don't let "lighten up the things" mean a program full of '30s and '40s hit tunes as though they were all Frank Sinatra's or Benny Goodman's or Glenn Miller's groupies and long for their younger days.
Karl
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2016-06-12 18:27
A few years back the community band I belong to played at a retirement home. After our performance some residents approached us to chat and we discovered amongst them a good clarinetist, who joined our band for the time he had left, and a very elderly lady who was a great honkytonk pianist, and who could also play Beethoven. We also played at a school for special needs kids and found a young boy who could barely speak but was a good classical pianist. You never know what talents there are in any group.
Clarinet Marmalade might be good.
Tony F.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-06-12 19:25
Our community band schedules one concert each summer at a local "health and rehab" facility. We set up outside, and the residents come sit in folding chairs or their wheelchairs, quite close to the front of the band. It's the normal program - show tunes, pop, marches, a little jazz, a bit of western classical. The audience is extremely appreciative; some sing, some conduct along, some march, standing or seated at their chairs. They voice their thanks with enthusiasm after the last number. The staff also appreciates the event, though they report that some of the residents don't want to fall asleep at their normal time later. Yes, you can sometimes see tears at these concerts, and sometimes tears also may block your sight.
It would be great to play in a small ensemble for those folks, from old songbooks dating from when the listeners were young. But that kind of programming is not necessary. I remember one young pianist played an all-Scriabin recital at one of those homes, and reported that it was very well received.
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Author: GeorgeL ★2017
Date: 2016-06-12 20:46
In my experience with community bands and clarinet choirs playing a retiring homes, the audience will be happier with toe-tappers than pieces they can snooze through.
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Author: TheClarinetKid
Date: 2016-06-13 02:01
Ohh ok, I myself call myself and my teacher (class) calls me retro boy. Buying typewriters, vintage morse code equipment and yeah. Maybe I was thinking too much of myself. I can play Charles V Stanford intermezzi or some Schumann.
If that's better?
------------------------------------ Signature--------------------------------------------
Buffet Crampon E11 Clarinet (French Buffet)
Buffet Crampon 'Vintage' R13 Clarinet
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-06-13 02:34
No one will be familiar with the Stanford Sonata, and few will be familiar with Schumann.
Play them what they know or what's immediately attractive the first time through. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or the opening theme of the Mozart Quintet finale, or the Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music, or the first verse of Der Lindenbaum come to mind.
Ken Shaw
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-13 06:18
Nothing beats the standards of 20th century American song composers. Tunes by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Van Husen, Duke Ellington, and Harry Warren were considered the classics of our age by Artie Shaw, and I completely agree with him. As songs, they are as good as anything written by Schubert or Faure, and they are natually appealing to anyone who grew up in America from the 1920's though the 1960's.
If you want a crash course in this music, I suggest you get a copy of the book
(probably out of print but still available if you search) by Yale University music theorist Alan Forte called Listening to Classic American Popular Songs (Yale University Press 2001). Forte explains why this music is structurally and historically so important, and the CD of baritone Richard Lalli and pianist Gary Chapman performing the the songs discussed amply supports him.
If you can do on the clarinet what Lalli does with his voice (and he does not try to "jazz up" the tunes, only sing them well), you will be a winner.
Post Edited (2016-06-14 04:58)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-06-13 18:28
The problem with those "Great American Songbook" standards isn't the music itself. It's the fact that nearly every musician who visits these residences independently decides that's the best stuff to play, and so the residents hear the same songs over and over and over and over and over. I mentioned Frank Sinatra above because, while I was staying with Dad (in 2014, not 1994 as I mistakenly typed above), just about everybody who gathered in the common room in the afternoons (including Dad and me) wanted to scream if we heard "My Way" one more time.
If you're playing in a "memory care" facility where the residents won't remember what day it is, let along what music they heard yesterday, then yeah, by all means, play the standards, but if you're playing the same old stuff for "independent living" and "assisted living" residents, someone's joking about Death by Bingo and someone else is whispering, "The manager might call this place Heaven's waiting room behind our backs, but I call it Hell's foyer." Yeah, they're kidding. This is an excellent residence and my dad loves it there. He's a gregarious guy who enjoys the social life. But he's had it up to *here* with "Fly Me to the Moon."
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2016-06-13 18:38)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2016-06-13 18:36
If you say you're going to play the classics for people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s then I'd imagine that Chicago, Procol Harum, Led Zepplin, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Bad Company, The Weavers, Harry Belafonte, Burl Ives, and more are in your playbook.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-06-13 18:41
Funny you should mention it, Mark -- but one time, a resident in her 80s came into the common room with a boom box propped on her walker, shortly after the volunteer musician had left. With a mischievous grin, she cranked up the Rolling Stones: "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." The whole place roared laughing.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: BartHx
Date: 2016-06-13 19:14
All good suggestions above, but I have to agree strongly with Mark. If you are talking about standards from the 30s, you would be talking about an audience in their mid-90s who would be old enough to remember them when they were popular (and that would be the ones whose memories are still intact). That would be fine for part of the selection. However, I would suggest that you push your range into the 50s and even some in the 60s. Mark gave some good suggestions for that range. I have no doubt that even more recent works and some of the better known classical would also be appreciated. With a clarinet, you are not likely to get into some of the recent stuff that is more guitar sound overload than music. Other than that, if you do it well, they will most likely appreciate it.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2016-06-13 19:31
BartHx wrote:
> However, I would suggest
> that you push your range into the 50s and even some in the 60s.
And 70s. There were a lot of 40 year old people dancing to the music in the 70s.
> With a clarinet, you are
> not likely to get into some of the recent stuff
Oh my. Think out of the box just a little.
Whiter Shade of Pale. Black Magic Woman. Me & Bobby McGee.
The lines fit very easily into a small group. You can run with a tape of percussion. The rock cheat books have enough of the lines and chords. You'll have to do a bit of writing yourself but it's not that hard. I run guitar lead lines all the time on clarinet and while often I can't get all the nuances, it still sounds good enough to communicate the mood.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-13 20:33
Sorry Guys,
But I'm 73 and the American classics for me are the standards by the composers I listed. I don't care if I never hear a Whiter Shade of Pale again so long as I live, especially on the clarinet. I do enjoy any of the Bossa Nova songs. Now those are classics. If I were in an old folks home or a hospital recovering and some guy brought in his clarinet to play a rock song, I think I would just laugh and think to myself "oh, no, not again!"
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2016-06-13 20:40
seabreeze wrote:
> Sorry Guys,
>
> But I'm 73 and the American classics for me are the standards
> by the composers I listed. I don't care if I never hear a
> Whiter Shade of Pale again so long as I live, especially on the
> clarinet.
Cool. Means mix it up.
If I heard another Broadway musical medley I'd puke. Which is why a good mix is required. Gives time for bathroom breaks
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-13 20:59
Lelia,
The songs you reference in the Sinatra Las Vegas nightclub vein are not on my list of standards. I'm talking about songs like Fascinating Rhythm, Manhattan, What is This Thing Called Love, Blue Moon, Night and Day, Fine and Dandy, Embracable You, I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans, I've Got the World on a String, April in Paris, I've Got You Under My Skin, The Way You Look Tonight, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, Autumn in New York, Something to Live For, There Will Never Be Another You and (from Brazil) most of the Bossa Nova Tunes.
These have literate, meaningful words, interesting harmonic changes (which is way jazz players of each generation return to them) and extraordinarily beautiful melodies. They are, as Artie Shaw correctly said, America's art songs, America's classy classic music. The composers of these songs had a affinity with the best classical music composers that was broken during the age of rock music. A paradigm was shattered.
I have to agree that for someone who wants to hear the Rolling Stones it would be useless to play these standards. But it would be equally useless to play Mozart or Bach or Debussy. They are all part of the lost paradigm that that audience doesn't want to hear. Why bring an acoustic clarinet in at all? Get a guitar and a keyboard synthesizer or an electronic clarinet and give them what they want.
I just want you to know that at 73 I still respond to the classical paradigm, and I know people older than I who do also. We want to hear the standards and we might also enjoy some new classical stuff like Brosse's War Concerto for clarinet and orchestra and Ursula Chin's wild concerto for clarinet. I'll take those any day above "Can't Get No Satisfaction," which brings me absolutely no satisfaction. Some old people do not want to be dummed down to the common denominator.
Post Edited (2016-07-17 02:29)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-06-13 23:46
>Some old people do not want to be dummed down to the common denominator.
>
Yeah, that was exactly my point. (I'm 68, btw.) No matter what music the musicians choose, if most of the musicians play the same thing, it gets boring, and at some point after it gets boring, it gets annoying. It's what happens with Muzak Christmas carols played over and over in the same sequence in stores -- except holiday shoppers can more easily escape.
The crowd at my dad's place (mostly people over 80 with at least one man who was 98 at the time -- he just turned 100 a few weeks ago) laughed it up when a resident brought down her boombox and cranked up the volume on "Satisfaction" because in context, that choice of song was a joke: just then they hadn't got no satisfaction from the well-intentioned guest musician.
I'm pretty sure the musicians never realized the residents were unhappy with the music, btw. I sat in (silently) on several discussions where residents agreed not to complain, because they did appreciate the musicians' efforts in volunteering and didn't want to embarrass the musicians, hurt their feelings or act ungrateful. The residents speculated that maybe the musicians didn't know how to play anything else.
Also btw, my violin-playing husband and some of his chamber music friends (professional pianist and advanced amateur string players) have performed classical music, including the Brahms and Mozart piano quintets, for enthusiastic audiences in local seniors' residences and also in a mental hospital. I sure wished I could teleport that music across the continent to my dad's place.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2016-06-13 23:48)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-14 00:39
The ones that liked Mozart and Brahms might also like some of the 60s and 70s rock-influenced music that was still in touch with the traditions of the standards. An example would be the Beatles's "When I'm 64," which makes whimsical use of the clarinet. A pro clarinetist I know recently played his own arrangement of this Beatles tune at a recital for--you guessed it--his 64th birthday.
The Beatles wrote tunes that don't require high decibel electronic blasts to get their point across and they incorporated everything from sitar to Bach trumpet, strings, and clarinets in their recordings. Most of their songs go well on clarinet, for example, "Hey Jude" or "Elenor Rigby" or "Yesterdays." Other rock bands that built their basic sound around a horn section rather than all electric instruments and drums produced songs that would be idiomatic for clarinet. Chicago's "Beginnngs" and "Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?" are good examples. Many recordings by Blood Sweat and Tears pay hommage to musical traditions of the past, including jazz/blues (their wonderful version of Billy Holliday's "God Bless the Child"), tuneful pop ("And When I Die," and "You Made Me So Very Happy") and the music of Eric Satie. Some of their arrangements were so finely crafted that they could even incorporate chorales and the quiet sound of a recorder or a lonesome blues harmonica. I'd venture that some of the early productions of Bob Dylan could be done well on clarinet, evolking that ghostly mood of his on "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man."
Some other sources from the 60s to dig into for pieces to adapt to clarinet would be The Fifth Dimension singers and Sergio Mendez, Brazil 66, exellent musicians all. I recall walking out of many hard rock concerts with my hands in my ears, fearing permanent loss of hearing. (No vain fear considering the number of ads placed in the musicians union paper in the 60s by ear doctors advertising services to treat deafness induced by amplified music). By contrast, it was great to hear the Fifth Dimension and Brazil 66 live with controlled sound equipment played at rational decibel levels. Both groups managed to duplicate recorded performances faithfully on tour, especially Brazil 66, who sounded, as I recall, live exactly as they did on record, with the clarity and focus of the two women singers being nothing short of amazing. I'm sure music from these two groups would bring smiles to the faces to those who remember them. Still another group that brings back fond memories is The Carpenters, famous for "We've Only Just Begun." Jose Felicano's "California Dreaming," Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill," the Beach Boys' "California Girls," Manhattan Transfer's "Route 66," Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" and "Mona Lisa" are a few more nostalgia oldies. Also many songs written or performed by Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, including Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You," and Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."
And Clarinet Kid, if you want to transcribe some of the good songs directly, just listen to recordings of them by Carly Simon. She's from my generation, not from the 1930's and she understands and sings them way better than Frank Sinatra. She does them right with the backing of superb studio musicians. Listen on YouTube for example to her renditions of "Where or When," "I Only Have Eyes for You," "Moonlight Serenade," "My Foolish Heart," "In the Still of the Night." She feels their pathos and compassion, and her contralto voice fits perfectly with the range of the clarinet. Using the songs as timeless vehicles, she transcends the limits of the rock genre that she was born into and covers a range of unblemished human feelings and emotions. Enough said. If you have the time, listen to Artie Shaw's version of "Where or When," from a period when popular music could still express the intricacies of romance rather than simple lust. These songs still speak across generations to both the elderly and the young today. I played the Shaw recording to a student I've been tutoring who was just accepted into NOCCA, the finest high school for the arts in Louisiana. And she responded with, "Wow, that is beautiful," so the thrill is far from gone; its still there if you have the ears to hear it.
We each have our own experience of the classics and the standards. In 1965 when I was in my 20s, I was taking Army Basic training at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, and the loudspeakers blared out "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" every last day. For me, that was the cultural dark ages. I didn't discover the American song classics until I was 27 and I heard some of the records Charlie Parker did with strings. I recall being absolutely transfixed by his performance of "April in Paris" and "Laura." I had heard these songs before but never performed like that. I went back to study the sheet music and read the lyrics of these songs. For me, their sublety and depth were like a rebirth, a renaissance out of the dark ages of high-decibel, ear drum destroying, over-amplified rock music. I went both backwards and forwards chronologically to hear performaces of these standards by Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane. Their beauties are perennial and good musicians will always find new ways to play them. Of that I am convinced. When Alan Forte's book came out, again as I read it I found still more reasons to value the standards which are musically and verbally poetic and a high note of our civilization.
Post Edited (2016-06-15 00:51)
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