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Re: Stanley Drucker, 1929-2022.

Author: SecondTry
Date: 2022-12-25 01:07

Growing up in the NY area, Long Island to be specific, I had the good fortune as a high schooler to attend free concerts in various county libraries where Stanley and Naomi would play.

Sometimes it's easy to write off Naomi's play, which was absolutely outstanding, simply because Stanley, playing in his prime, was just "not of this earth."

Stanley could sight read flawlessly a passage many of us could spend a month maybe getting down flawlessly. It just seemed to come easy to him--which I know is illusionary at best. His level of talent only comes at the intersection of hard work and innate ability.

I found Glenn Dicterow's description of him https://youtu.be/Uc5kiwL7TlA?t=44 much on point. He never much seemed to age, nor did his love of music. He kept old material fresh by changing it up a bit to both his and the audience's benefit. Like Dicterow's analogy of him to The Picture of Dorain Grey, I always considered him the "Dick Clark" of classical music, never seeming to much age.

Sadly off course age catches up with all of us eventually. But I thank him for inspiring and motivating me. I never took lessons from him, although we shared teachers (Russianoff.) I'm pretty sure Tom H studied with Leon too, who Stanley was to name his son after (and met Naomi through), I'm told.

People have asked in this age of required double tonguing and circular breathing if Mr. Drucker could have made it through today's auditions. I think he'd do so, especially armed with the lifetime of experience he acquired.

RIP Stanley. You can finally relax that your Lelandais mouthpiece has outlived you rather than vice versa--Mr. Drucker believing that most mouthpieces weren't much better than door stops.

The joke was on you. You would have sounded great on any mouthpiece. If I'm not mistaken, in this very video it discusses Stanley playing the Mozart with the NY Phil, on less than a day's notice when another headliner took ill, from memory, on "Mitch's borrowed" (Mitchell Estrin's) "A" clarinet.

Post Edited (2022-12-25 01:09)

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