Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2005-12-24 00:00
Ok I've re-read every post in this thread, and I am having a problem seeing just where I "go on attack" copy it and show me.
As far as my motivation for learning the martino, I believe I said it was my motivation, I don't expect it to be the same as anyone else's that would make for quite a boring world. As far as me inferring that Connie doesn't have the requisite skills to play klezmer and telling her so, I'm having trouble finding that spot in my posts also. I believe I might have stated what, in my opinion, what I think are the requisite skills to learning this music are. I will say it again, it is my opinion that you can't learn how to play this music by reading it. I'm sure someone could send me a MP3 saying, "I've never heard any klezmer, and I can do it", and they would be right, this is America and one can do pretty much as one pleases.
As far as the Mike Curtis stuff, Lyben has it listed:
Curtis KLEZMER REPERTOIRE Vols 1 & 2 (solo cl) $9.95 ea
Curtis KLEZMER WEDDING (3 Bb/Bs cl) $16.95
Curtis KLEZMER WEDDING (w.w. qt) $16.95
Curtis TEN KLEZMER DUOS (2 cl) $15.0
Curtis THREE KLEZMER TRIOS (3 cl) $14.95
In 1979, I was a student of Leon Russionoff in NY City. I was walking around Lincoln center one evening and I saw a multitude of Hasidic Jew going into the concert hall. There was a man standing alone, so I walked up and asked, " what's going on tonight". He replied that there was a concert by the "world's greatest clarinetist, Giora Feidman" and as a smart ass young 19 year old scholarship student at Manhattan school of music, I replied "Well I'm a Clarinetist, and I never heard of him." This man looked at me and said, "you're serious, you don't know Meistro Feidman's playing, he shook his head, reached in his pocket handed me a ticket, and told me, " you need this more than I do". I went in sat 4 rows from the stage, and had a life changing experience. I had to learn this music, I had to learn how to connect to an audience like this man. I walked out of the hall when to a Sam Goody's and bought two cassette tapes. Jewish Soul Music, and Niggunum of my People. I wore those tapes out, transplanting the inerds to other cassettes. I learned every tune, I found more music by more players, I discovered Tarras and Brandwein, and others, transcribing maybe 150 or so tunes.
I relate this story not to impress anyone but to impress upon you how important I think this music is. Every blue moon, I've found myself at a gig when a rock band play the Hora and if there is sax player, he will inevitably pick up a clarinet and start schmering and yucking, and making all kind of weird sounds on a clarinet and think he's playing klezmer. It makes my skin crawl. To me it's like American kids going to Italy and adding an Os to the end English words and thinking it's funny and that Italians will get it.
If I said anything that really was offensive to anyone, I'm sorry. I think every clarinetist should be exposed to some of the great klezmer players of the past. There is way more to the clarinet universe than the Marcellus Mozart recording.
Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in Clarinet performance
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The Ethnic Clarinet
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