 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Claire Annette
Date: 2009-01-20 14:29
I'm watching the band play before the inauguration. How in the WORLD are the clarinetists able to play well at those cold temperatures? Do they play Buffet Greenlines? Are there heaters strategically placed throughout the band?
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2009-01-20 19:04
Alex says it well. Also, I thot the "Simple Gifts" "quartet" was great, McGill had a fine perf. of several choruses. Weather didn't seem to bother, and Yoyo had a big smile. Comments? Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: BandieSF
Date: 2009-01-20 23:47
And a saw a Backun barrel on one of those clarinets, so if my eyes weren't deceiving me there were wood instruments out there. And the intonation was pretty much spot-on. Something like that takes talent!
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Current set-up:
Classical:
Strength 4 1/4 Legere Signature Series
Vandoren M13 Lyre
Jazz:
Strength 3 3/4 Legere Quebec
Pomarico Jazz*
Clarinets:
Buffet E11 Student Model
Buffet R13 Greenline
<http://operationhighschool.blogspot.com
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2009-01-21 00:45
The clarinetist that played before Obama's vows was playing a wooden instrument. I was concerned for all the wood instruments--violin, cello, piano and clarinet.
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Author: clarinetfreak
Date: 2009-01-21 21:24
I play in the United States Naval Academy Band (we did not play during the recent inauguration) but all the clarinetists in our band are issued a Greanline for this purpose.
Good Times!
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Author: Jaysne
Date: 2009-01-22 02:24
I'm sure that whatever instruments they were using, they weren't their best ones. They were using back-ups for sure. I wouldn't risk my best horn to temperatures like that.
And there must have been some sort of heating unit employed in their little alcove. Strings and bare fingers on a day like that? No way.
I also imagine they must have tuned the piano about 10 minutes before they started playing.
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Author: awm34
Date: 2009-01-22 11:38
I read somewhere (perhaps here) that Yo Yo Ma plays a carbon fiber cello.
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2009-01-22 14:32
On one of side of the scale:
A cracked barrel, even a cracked clarinet
On the other side:
A new (some would say long-awaited) president of the USA.
Which one should we really care about?
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2009-01-22 14:46
McGill was really fine. If you have not read is bio, it's a great Chicago story.
My wife saw the Backun barrel and said "what the heck is that..." A nice quartet but what would one expect with some of the world's finest musicians.
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Author: CarlT
Date: 2009-01-22 15:00
My wife, who admits to knowing less about music than even I do, was very impressed with that quartet. We both thought that performance was so good, and she got to hear what a fine instrument the clarinet can be when someone like McGill is playing it.
CarlT
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Author: awm34
Date: 2009-01-22 17:58
Just learned that my good friend's cousin, a retired Chicago Lyric opera clarinetist, taught a youthful McGill (age 10-11) for 2-3 years.
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2009-01-22 18:13
So is there any real fact about the Cello being wood or not? I know there are articles about him to be playing the carbon fiber, but the pictures that I've seen of it don't look anything like the very real (looking) cello that he played. The Carbon instrument looks completely different.
Was it real wood or not? I'm still thinking despite the reports, he actually played a real (and quite old, valuable, etc) Wood Cello.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Bluesparkle
Date: 2009-01-22 21:04
Having been in a very cold (and windy) inaugural parade myself (George Bush Sr.), I can say that I played my good wood clarinet (R-13) for lack of more appropriate choice. By the time I got to college, I was so strapped for cash that I sold my old plastic Vito for $35 to a student who had to take a woodwind class.
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2009-01-23 03:36
A friend of mine in the Army band played a plastic Yamaha clarinet and I suspect many of her colleagues did as well.
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Author: hrvanbeek
Date: 2009-01-23 11:31
I can't say what anyone else was playing on, but the clarinet players in the Army Field Band marching in the parade all played plastic clarinets of varying makes and models.
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Author: bbarner
Date: 2009-01-23 11:54
According to the New York Times (January 23, 2009, page A1 of the New York edition), what we all heard was recorded on Sunday. The quartet wore earpieces and played along with the prerecorded music. The violin and cello were modern instruments. Ma considered using a carbon-fiber cello but didn't because its appearance would have been a distraction.
Bill Barner
http://www.billbarner.com
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Author: dgclarinet
Date: 2009-01-23 12:20
The local news in Atlanta this morning had a story about the recording being played Tuesday...that is the first and probably last time that intonation will ever be mentioned on Atlanta radio.
It does make sense to use a recording though. It worked and sounded halfway decent. If even none of us clarinet players noticed that they were lip syncing, they must have done a great job.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-01-23 12:56
>>According to the New York Times (January 23, 2009, page A1 of the New York edition), what we all heard was recorded on Sunday.>>
The Washington Post article, from AP, isn't clearly worded, but seems to say that the quartet wore earpieces and did play at the Inauguration along with the recording, but without live mics, so that the audience only heard the recording. On CNN, there were no close shots of the pianist during the performance and it's easy to fake blowing into a clarinet, but I'm pretty sure the AP reporter gets it right, because it's nearly impossible to fake playing violin and cello convincingly in closeups -- and Ma and Perlman looked completely convincing. I did see places where fingers and notes didn't quite match, but attributed the discrepancies to problems with synchronization I've noticed on a lot of digital TV stations.
I did wonder why these musicians played in tune so much better than everyone else, but assumed they'd had enough time in a heated space for the instruments to warm up and stabilize. Apparently not. The Post article says the musicians intended to play live right up to the last minute, then determined that they couldn't play up to their standards in those weather conditions.
The "Milli Vanilli" aspect of things doesn't bother me as much as it usually might because these four fine musicians have already more than earned their reputation. They can and did play the music themselves -- they weren't faking it to music performed by others -- and the weather conditions that day did make a mess of most of the fully live performances by the marching bands. I don't blame top soloists for not wanting to put a substandard performance into a public record that would follow them forever. It does bother me that someone didn't simply announce the facts honestly to the audience at the time. This late explanation looks lame -- looks like an admission of wrongdoing instead of what it should have been: a straightforward way of coping with the reality of the venue.
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: Joseph LeBlanc
Date: 2009-01-23 21:39
Just wanted to post and clarify a few things. As a member of the Marine Band I was lucky to perform in the Inauguration Ceremony this past week.
All the members of the clarinet section have multiple government issue clarinets, some are designated for outdoor ceremonial duties but all are very high quality instruments. Almost to a person, Wood R13s were used for the ceremony. I've been surprised how durable these clarinets can be. I've performed in the cold and rain many times over the past 3 years and haven't had a crack yet...
Including the prelude music, we performed outside for about 3 hours. In case of extreme cold we recorded all of the music in advance. Out of those 3 hours of music, only the first two marches were 'lipsynced' as we warmed up our horns(in particular the brass section, whose valves can actually freeze at that temperature). The rest of the music, to include the music you heard during the ceremony was 100% live.
The Marine Band performs in extreme conditions more than many people might think, so we have experience dealing with the elements, but I'm always amazed at how well the band is able to adjust(especially in terms of intonation) and sound great.
-Joe
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