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My unlikely career.

Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2013-08-21 16:55

Just though some of you might be interested in how and why I became a musician.

My 50-year career with the BSO was achieved party through talent, a lot of hard work and lots of good luck. As they say, being in the right place at the right time.
When sitting up in the bleeder seats at Carnegie Hall as a college student, thinking to myself, if only I could play in a major orchestra one day as a career, I’ve lived my dream.
I began playing clarinet in the 8th grade when, as a severe stutter, my mother was advised to get me music lessons as an outlet to build my confidence. I choose the clarinet because I wanted to play like Benny Goodman but discovered later I couldn’t really play jazz. I decided to become a musician when I was a junior in HS and began playing the saxophone, the oboe and flute hoping to be a show and big band musician at that time.
While in high school I began to study clarinet with Eric Simon at the Mannes prep department on a recommendation of my sister’s piano teacher. He became the inspiration that drove me to begin practicing clarinet more and more and then I attended The Mannes College. After my first year at Mannes I went to the Aspen Music Festival during the summer and I became inspired to become an orchestra player so when I returned home I sold my secondary instruments and bought a bass clarinet and an Eb clarinet to learn all the orchestral clarinet seats and fell in love with the bass clarinet. I also doubled and tripled my practice time. Then I decided to transfer to the Manhattan School of Music to study with Leon Russianoff having studied with Simon for over three years. He was also an incredible inspiration and great clarinet teacher. Soon after that I took bass clarinet lessons for a year with Joe Allard and really became proficient on that instrument as well.
I was lucky because my parents supported every decision I made. When it came to my music they never said no, they found a way to fund it. I was a middle child and my father drove a bread delivery truck and my mother worked part time in a bakery when I began college so they could afford to pay for my education. I was a very lucky indeed to have such supporting parents. No one in my family had any music training or back round in music but they were just supportive.

I spent my second college summer at Pierre Monteux’s conducting school playing in the orchestra and my third and forth summer in the American Wind Symphony. While in college I performed with the school orchestras and with the National Orchestral Association training orchestra in NY and really began to get the orchestra experience I needed. I was driven and worked my butt off. I gave up almost everything else and practiced, practiced and practiced. But I still had a life on Saturday nights. As a senior in college I was exempt from the draft from the Viet Nam war because of my severe stuttering. It took about ten years after school to over come that and now I rarely stutter any more.
My first job out of college was playing second clarinet in the Halifax Symphony in Nova Scotia Canada and teaching at the Kinhaven Music Festival in Vermont that summer. Then I auditioned for the bass clarinet job in Baltimore the following year and accepted it even though I was offered the principal job in Halifax because I was getting married and the Baltimore job paid more as well as having longer season, 28 weeks as apposed to 23. It was also closer to my hometown and family, the Bronx in NY City.
Eventually I got some very lucky breaks while I was in Baltimore and decided to make my home there. I soon landed the principal job with the Eastern Music Festival Philharmonic in Greensboro NC, a performing and teaching position I held for 25 summers. I even because the personnel manager after a few summers. I got to play the entire principal repertoire, all the standard clarinet concertos and chamber music. I was also fortunate to be asked to teach at Towson University. That position began as a part time position and developed into a full time University position that gave me the salary necessary to make a decent living in conjunction with my BSO job, which at that time did not yet have a full season. Latter I was asked to join the Peabody Conservatory faculty as an adjunct clarinet and bass clarinet instructor. I had come full circle; doing everything I set out to do as a musician, except learn how to play jazz ☺. Now I have a great family, four children and two grand children to date. I’m retiring on my own terms and am in good health. I’m the luckiest person alive. Edward Palanker

ESP eddiesclarinet.com

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