 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Mario
Date: 2000-07-05 17:08
Dear fellow clarinetists:
Saxophone players, like clarinetists, have their own association and annual gathering. Today, in Montreal, the International Saxophone Congress edition 2000 just opened. Naturally, I went and checked this out since the venue is one subway stop from my place of work. Being a veteran ClarinetFest goer (planning to be in Oklahoma City next week), some interesting comparison between the atmosphere between the two might be of interest.
ClarinetFest events are well run. The saxophone place was a little bit of a mess this morning: spread out: without a clear focus and venue. Probably a side-effect of the local organization. Mind you, Ostend will be hard to beat.
Essentially just anybody can walk in and at least check out the exhibits. At ClarinetFest, you need to be registered. That might be a good idea to keep in mind to bring observers in (like local students).
Surprisingly, there are more people participating in ClarinetFest than the saxophone event. That is quite interesting since there are more saxophonists than clarinetists out there.
There were much fewer exhibitors at the saxophone event than at ClarinetFest. Why? I asked a few of them (who will be in Oklahoma next week for ClarinetFest as well, I am told). The answer here is interesting. In the saxohone world, players tend to buy stock equipment from established brand. Saxophone players as a group do not seek the lastest gizmo that will give them an edge. This morning for instance, I saw only one custom mouthpiece manufacturer, and no custom sax manufacturer.
The exhibitors present who will be in OK next week (for instance, Woodwinds and Brass) told me that we, clarinetists, are fanatic gizmo buyers. We will buy this special mouthpiece, ligature, reed, you name it. We actually buy custom instruments from boutique artisans. We spend little fortunes on case winterized for our fragile instrument, we like to buy new pieces of music right off the rack, etc... So, there is a market at ClarinetFest-like events for those you build that kind of stuff.
That being said, the couple of performance that I saw were truly outstanding. As with ClarinetFest, the opening recitals were given by grand masters. The opening concert tonight (which I am going to) has several world premiere for saxophone and symphony orchestra which will undoubtedly be fabulous. I will keep posting on this thread my observations with the idea of continuing to compare the clarinet and saxophone communitee.
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