Which clarinet player from the past would you love to meet?
It’s time to jump inside the tonebase clarinet time travel machine! ⏰🚀
Whether it was Benny Goodman, the so-called “King of Swing” or Anton Stadler (the clarinetist who collaborated with Mozart on his Concerto), or someone else entirely, we’ve all been inspired by clarinetists from the past while on our own clarinet journeys!
Which clarinetist from history would you love to meet, and why? What would you ask them?
7 replies
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Benny Goodman played jazz and Mozart.
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I remember watching the movie with Steve Allen, himself a fine musician, portraying Goodman and playing the Mozart. I also saw Goodman playing with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops many years ago, and I believe he played the Mozart. I remember reading that after WWII, he changed his embouchure completely, which I thought was.very brave and the sign of a great musician who was always striving to improve.
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Richard Muhlfeld because I want to find out more about Brahm’s admiration for him. Was it a bromance or a romance? And I really wouuld like to be present at the dinner of Mendelssohn and the Baermanns after he wrote op 113 for them and they cooked a meal
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I think for me it has to be the wonderful jazz player Eric Dolphy - I love his recordings, especially when he's playing bass clarinet, what a sound, what a creative approach to improvisation - I find the playing so moving. I'd just love to have been able to hear him live!
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I would love to talk to some of the very early jazz clarinetists, particularly Johnny Dodds. His way of playing seems so fully-formed, even in his earliest recordings. I want to know what/who he was listening to as he was learning to play, and what he practiced/studied that informed his senses of composition and improvisation. And to hear those early Armstrong bands live, instead of through imperfect and scratchy records would be divine.