 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-01-08 03:22
Hey Guys,
It occurred to me that some of you may be quite competitive as a player and still not know where to go to see current openings for clarinet players.
I have to admit that I am not so current on this front. I believe that there is still a central publication (perhaps web based now) by the A.F. of M. (American Federation of Musicians) where larger ensembles post openings (major symphony orchestras and the military service bands). You'll have to join the union to receive information from the union.
In addition to that there are some web entities that I have run across:
o Das Orchester
o Musical Chairs
o Facebook Clarinet Jobs
o YouTube - The Candid Clarinetist
I'm sure many of you have other suggestions you can add to this list!
THANKS IN ADVANCE !!!
..............Paul Aviles
Post Edited (2022-01-08 20:40)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2022-01-08 04:57
We should note that The Candid Clarinetist is not primarily about clarinet job openings. It is about all aspects of clarinet playing. But the host sometimes has guest clarinetists who mention job openings, and he sometimes devotes individual segments to a recap of orchestral and teaching positions for clarinet that have recently been filled. For example when Greg Raden and Michael Wayne recently appeared in a Candid Clarinetist segment entitled "What is a Good Tone," there was a lot of discussion about the orchestras in which the guests had played and what positions they might have recently won. In another segment with Chris Pell of the Cincinnati Orchestra, Pell talks about nearly every audition he has taken and all the clarinet jobs he has held. And what did he do right and what wrong in each of them. All pretty educational.
Post Edited (2022-01-08 07:11)
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2022-01-09 05:38
The United States Air Force Band
CALLING ALL CLARINETISTS | We are hiring!
Materials due: March 29, 2022
Audition date: May 2, 2022
For more information about this job opening, please visit
https://bit.ly/32rEH0r
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2022-01-09 06:22
For 35 years I received the A.F. of M.'s "International Musician" newspaper, containing the orchestral openings. I quit the union in 2008 when our area had no longer received any MPTF money for concerts since about 2000. A few others I know also quit for that reason. Sorry, a bit off topic.
The Most Advanced Clarinet Book--
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Boreal Ballad for unaccompanied clarinet-Sheet Music Plus item A0.1001314.
Musicnotes product no. MNO287475
Post Edited (2022-01-09 06:25)
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2022-01-09 11:32
Is it the same in music as in science, where there are kind of unwritten rules that you have to follow in order to get into a good career path?
When I was starting, I had to do all the formal stuff, like getting into a good degree course and getting good grades. But I also did voluntary work in the University during all of my term times and right through summer holiday for four years. That led to me getting my first summer job, and on to a good graduate school.
There were things that I didn't realise about science that may well be the same in music though. We had to be willing to move city or country at least every three years for the first decade or more, and even beyond. That is a massive upheaval for people's family life. It causes chaos for anyone who is not bullet-proof healthwise, as they need to find a new Doctor/Dentist and enter a new medical system. That's before anybody even thinks about lanuage and cultural barriers to integration, affording rental accommodation and bills, and learning how to keep safe in a big city, and coping with whatever the new weather systems do.
Is it the same in music, and are you also expected to do it all on a shoe-string financially?
I think it would be really good to talk about all that stuff, so the young musicians coming through have an idea of what they are getting into. I had no idea at all when I started.
I imagine that for young musicians in the UK where we have just lost the right for them to travel across EU boundaries and they are trying to cope with constant cancellations due to covid, things must be very challenging indeed.
I do wonder if what everyone needs now is a short course in how to play an orchestral part with a click-track earpiece, form a virtual orchestra, edit video together, and create a meaningful revenue stream online.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-01-09 16:36
All good points and much of what you posit is true. The podcast interview I found of recent Boston Symphony winning second chair Chris Elchico covers a lot of this. He worked to fund his audition "habit" and learned from each "round" of auditions (the interview is over two years old now and illustrates just how much he was working to keep the music and auditions going).
The Language of Creativity Podcast
PERFECT PITCH – CHRIS ELCHICO (CONCERT SAXAPHONIST/CLARINETIST) EP.7
I want to keep this posting more positive and pointed toward good practices (less about the overall process). I will get to the best advice I got many years ago when I have more time later today.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-01-10 03:32
The best advice I got regarding preparing for symphonic clarinet auditions came from Bill Wrzesien of the New England Conservatory in Boston. He put practicing symphonic excerpts along with scales and technical exercises into the daily practice routine. His spin on it was to take the panoply of typical excerpts that come up on most auditions and divide them into four different manilla envelopes. You'd categorize them in following way: One envelope would be all fast examples, the next would be all lyrical, then all tongued (in some manner), finally fast and slurred. There is a lot of cross over but part of the exercise of dividing them up was to get you to personalize your groupings.
Then, you take one packet a day going through all four groupings within a week (this leaves room to have three days a week where you are NOT doing excerpts). This way you keep them under your fingers at all times and may only need to polish up one or two for the big auditions coming down the pike (or leave you time to practice the one or two odd ones called for in a specific audition that are not typically asked for all the time).
Really the point is to just get into the excerpts and keep them under your fingers. Even if you think you need more "whatever" before you are ready for such and such excerpt, just play it. Just having the sonic idea in your ears or slight imperfections in your fingerings is so much better than......."I'll get to that some day."
...................Paul Aviles
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Author: donald
Date: 2022-01-10 05:27
I did a similar thing, only I took each category and made 3 piles evenly divided between tech/expressive/artic, and then made each pile into a booklet. I'd work on 1 booklet a week- covering the 3 booklets in a month. This was very helpful in helping me win a couple of auditions, but then you still have to pass a trial which turned out to be not much more than a popularity contest in some orchestra.
EDIT- this was written in a hurry and is NOT at all clear....
- I made 3 piles, a pile each of technical, expressive and articulation. OF COURSE many overlap between these categories, but I divided them this way best I could
- I then made 3 booklets, comprising of (as though I was dealing cards out evenly) "tech/espressive/artic/tech/expressive/artic " etc
I'm the middle of 100 things with not much time so this is poorly described, but I think you'll now get what I meant.
Post Edited (2022-01-10 11:40)
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