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Re: D. Bonade mouthpieces

Author: NOLA Ken
Date: 2018-09-07 19:44

Brad, I'm going to add a bit of interesting history here, as I've been revisiting my own history with the clarinet after over 3 decades away from it and am only now beginning to appreciate this Bonade mouthpiece. A question by a local music teacher sent me researching my old college clarinet teacher, whose name I had forgotten over the years. It turns out that he was Earl Bates, a student of Daniel Bonade and former principal clarinetist with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. I was entirely immature as a person and as a musician when I tackled Indiana University School of Music where he was teaching in 1968 (I lasted less than a year), and asked Prof. Bates to take me on as a student entirely on the basis that he played Leblancs as did I. I had absolutely no knowledge or appreciation of who he was in the world of music. I'm certain that I was an uninspiring student. (In our initial interview I told him that I was interested in playing Dixieland like Pete Fountain and Benny Goodman. I've recently learned that only a few years earlier such an utterance would have resulted in the IU School of Music showing me the door.) He expressed disapproval of the Leblanc Classic II I had received as a high school graduation present (for reasons I now understand but which he failed to articulate). But for some reason in those few months I studied with him he gave me this D. Bonade mouthpiece, suggesting gently only that I try it instead of the Vandoren B* I had been using. He never explained how it was supposed to help me, and in fact it never worked well on the Classic II (which I've since learned had been rebored and sounds more like a Dynamic H/Pete Fountain than a Symphonie or Doubel LL). But now fifty years later you've helped me to realize what a gem and piece of history I have. Thanks.

- Ken

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