 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2013-05-05 13:24
Feature article in music section of NYT today.
richard smith
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-05-05 15:05
It's an admiring but uninformed article, repeating many times the canard that the clarinet is really hard to play, which is why it is no longer used in jazz.
Ken Shaw
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Author: kilo
Date: 2013-05-05 17:27
Quote:
All through grade school, I took lessons, but in high school, as I became captivated by jazz, I tossed the clarinet aside and took up the saxophone and flute. In the little high school group I played in, I don’t think I ever once trotted out my clarinet.
I could have penned that myself, and maybe a few others on this board could have as well!
Why did the clarinet fall out of favor? Maybe because the big guns played saxophone (although Bird held the instrument in respect). Maybe because the sonority didn't lend itself as readily to the five piece format of trumpet, reed, and rhythm section. Maybe because it wasn't loud enough. There must be a reason but I can't think of a good one. Especially when I listen to what Buddy DeFranco was playing at the time or to any of the current excellent clarinetists.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2013-05-05 19:36
Tired trope about the clarinet 'falling out of favor.' If we check out history more seriously, when we say the clarinet was once a dominant voice in jazz, we're really talking about two guys: Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Before them, clarinetists were overshadowed by trumpet players, after them, clarinetists were overshadowed by sax players.
Does anyone other than clarinet specialists remember Leon Roppolo? Jimmie Noone? Yet those were arguably the most important players before Goodman and Shaw. Bechet spent most of his career on soprano sax, and was overshadowed by Louis Armstrong anyhow, as was everyone else.
IMO, the shocking thing isn't that clarinet 'fell out of favor', but that it ever produced two brilliant enough players to dominate public attention in the first place.
Perhaps the greater shock is the fall of the trombone. At the height of the swing era, there were as many or more bands led by tombonists than clarinetists: Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Glen Gray....after the advent of bop, it was almost strictly a sideman instrument.
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The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: kilo
Date: 2013-05-05 19:52
That's a really interesting take on it, MarlboroughMan. Maybe the clarinet reigned as long as it did because of its primacy in New Orleans traditional jazz.
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Author: gkern
Date: 2013-05-05 22:05
I think, not necessarily in chronological order, that Buddy DeFranco, Pete Fountain, Kenny Davern and Eddie Daniels, among others, would take issue with the clarinet "fell out of favor"...
Gary K
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Author: brycon
Date: 2013-05-05 22:53
Quote:
I think, not necessarily in chronological order, that Buddy DeFranco, Pete Fountain, Kenny Davern and Eddie Daniels, among others, would take issue with the clarinet "fell out of favor"...
I doubt they would.
It is a simple matter of fact: there are very few competent jazz clarinetists, and there are fewer still that are producing (for lack of better words) new and relevant music. What is more, the clarinet is not a permanent member of the big-band, and it is not a field of study in university jazz programs (whose enrollment is usually based upon the big-band).
As Eric pointed out, relevant jazz clarinetists were and will most likely continue to be something of an anomaly.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2013-05-05 23:51
It gets annoying when yet another journalist rewrites the same article we've been reading for years.
Instead of padding the article with uninteresting repetitions about the decline of the clarinet in jazz (a topic that was last considered cutting edge in the 1950s), why not compare and contrast Anat Cohen's playing to other jazz clarinetists of the past and present? Do we really need to drag out the "I wanted to be John Coltrane" quote again? The woman is 38 years old, has been winning DownBeat polls for years now, and we're still talking about her teachers' comments at Berklee? Doesn't this writer realize we've read those same quotes time after time, in countless interviews with Anat? Is it too much to ask that the reporter do a google search and read the other write-ups...then contribute something original?
Guess the blogosphere has to do the real work when it comes to serious analysis of jazz clarinet.
Eric
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The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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