Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-08 01:01
We probably have the same idea. Syos is giving players working in the commercial and jazz fields exactly what they need. Classical players need something else. Imagine you are trying to pass an audition to get into a classical orchestra or opera orchestra. You need a mouthpiece that will get you through the demanding excerpts these organizations put in front of you from such composers as Beethoven, Stravinsky, Carl Nielsen, Ginestera, Mozart, Kodaly, Schubert, R. Strauss, etc. You've got to play the notes, rhythms, and dynamic markings the composer put on the page in accordance with the accepted composer's style and the interpretation a conductor wants. In actual performances you've got to project out of an opera pit or in a big concert hall without electronic amplification, and still blend with woodwinds, strings and other instruments.
Shaping a Personal Sound in this setting is not a high priority. This is a different set of requirements from those of a creative jazz player deftly improvising the blues over a mike, and backed with a rhythm section in a night club or a big band doubler putting down the sax and picking up the clarinet to play a swinging jazz chart. Both are demanding situations, but the exact nature of the demands is different.
Syos could have some of the superb French classical clarinetists tell them what they are looking for in a mouthpiece. Let those players tell them how important shaping your own sound is to them or whether they might assign greater value to shaping the sounds intended by the composers in the works they perform. Accept what they say and then shape a mouthpiece to fit their actual desires and needs. They could ask Philippe Cuper, Patrick Messina, Philippe Berrod, Nicholas Baldyrou, Jerome Voisin, Jerome Comte, Florent Heau, Olivier Patey, Sylvie Hue, Pascal Moragues, Michel Arrignon (who reportedly has used plastic mouthpieces), and Paul Meyer, for example. All these players have decades of experience as soloists, chamber music players, opera and orchestral members. With their input Syos could possibly make classical mouthpieces that players worldwide might consider a better alternative to Vandoren and Selmer.
There is of course no reason why Syos should be pressured into making mouthpieces that appeal to classical players. Either way, I wish them well.
Still another future is possible. Many have complained that clarinetists worldwide are beginning to sound the same. With Buffet Tosca clarinets and Vandoren BD5 and B40L mouthpieces abounding, the old national and individual differences have all but disappeared. You can't tell French from American, English from Italian, Russian from any of those, and everybody is playing with a darker, more covered, quasi-Germanic sound. So maybe Syos can bring more diversity to this broadening grey field of sound and style (if that is what it is)? Maybe, but they will still have to talk to lots of classical clarinetists to get to that point.
P.S. I like the way James Evans sounds on the blue Syos for New Orleans style jazz. But I'm not convinced that mouthpiece would be a first choice for the Hindemith Clarinet Concerto or the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time.
Post Edited (2020-07-08 22:06)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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