 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-07-26 13:42
Here is a short list of famous people who besides their main occupation, also played the clarinet. Please feel free to add some names.
King Sihanouk of Cambodia. The king played jazz clarinet and saxophone and played with the likes of Lionel Hampton. The latter composed a piece in honor of the potentate: "The King and I".
Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve. He studied the clarinet at Julliard, but must have found it too taxing.
Arthur Jensen. A famous and controversial Berkeley psychologist who wrote the hotly-contested: "the Bell Curve". Not about a clarinet bell.
Steven Spielberg, the film director. Spielberg actually plays clarinet on the soundtrack to his film 'Jaws". Did he adapt a special embouchure for "Jaws"?
Woody Allen, of course, with his Albert system clarinet and woody tone.
Paul Hindemith. Hindemith composed for and played practically everything.
John Adams, arguably the world's most often played living composer. Adams actually started out as a professional clarinetist
Emile Zola! Zola was reported to be a rather poor clarinetist, but loved the instrument, which he referred to as : "l'instrument qui représent le mieux l'amour sensuel" (no translation required).
Looking forward to having my friends on the B Board complete the list.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-07-26 17:19
Tom: Thank you. I've forgotten Sir Nicholas Schackleton, the famous English geologist, who also had possibly the world's finest collection of clarinets. It is now, if I remember correctly, in the possession of the University of Edinburgh. I had never heard that Wittgenstein played the clarinet.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: MichaelW
Date: 2016-07-26 17:38
Attachment: Kleist.jpg (294k)
Heinrich von Kleist, (1777 - 1811), author, as a young Prussian officer, is said to have played the clarinet in a very able, even virtuosic way.
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Author: Douglas
Date: 2016-08-02 22:40
Some others who played clarinet: Dr. Michael DeBakey, famous cardiac surgeon
who developed the Roller Pump, later used as an essential part of the heart-
lung machine, part of heart bypass surgery. He was said to have taught himself
to play the clarinet which became of lifelong importance to him.
Dr. Michael Swango, not famous but "infamous" for having poisoned up to
60 patients during his medial career in the US and abroad but having pled quilty
to only 4 deaths, and who is now and forever in prison for his murders. He
was my clarinet student, before he studied to become a medical doctor, and
was a good player on his Buffet R13.
What a contrast between these two medical/clarinet people!
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-08-02 23:29
Dear Douglas: I had heard of DeBackey, who if I remember correctly, operated on Boris Yeltsin (they took him all the way to Russia because he was simply considered the best in the world). I didn't realize he was a clarinetist. Swango, I had never heard of, and was horrified. Does he play in the prison band?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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