Required recordings, spring 2011

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Once again it’s time for required recordings.

This semester, I’m having my each of my students add a good chamber music recording to their library. The students required to buy these recordings are technically enrolled in applied lessons, which means they study solo repertoire, although I do also coach some of them in chamber music. But even those whose degree requirements don’t specify chamber group participation ought to have at least the most passing of acquaintances with chamber music for their instrument.

For the saxophonists, choosing a format was simple enough—the saxophone quartet is the only significant chamber music setting with saxophones (although I did consider using this recording).

For the other reed players, I considered some options (double reed quartets, clarinet quartets or choirs, bassoon quartets…) but ultimately settled on a wind quintet recording for the clarinetists and double reeders. This may be the only chamber recording I require any of them to buy during the course of their 4-year (well, hopefully 4-year) education—I could possibly choose one more in another couple of years—and I wanted to make it count. The wind quintet tradition is rich and, in woodwind terms, long.

As usual, I was looking for good collections of fairly standard repertoire by exemplary musicians, reasonably priced and readily available. I had to steer clear of some tempting wind quintet choices by outstanding European groups, since I wanted to make sure my students are absorbing American-school ideas about tone. I also gave strong consideration to a great 2-disc set by the Utah Saxophone Quartet (which includes a couple of my former teachers; incidentally, all four members are really excellent doublers and they play some nice clarinet quartets on this recording, too), which I ultimately passed on because it’s not (yet?) available on iTunes and I’m trying to be 21st-century enough not to demand that my students buy physical discs.

So here’s what I finally settled on:

Borealis Wind Quintet, A La Carte: Short Works for Winds

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Rota Petite Offrande Musicale, Farkas Hungarian Dances, Beach Pastorale, Schuller Suite, Grainger: Walking Tune, Turrin: Three Summer Dances, Persichetti: Pastoral, Milhaud: La Cheminee du Roi Rene, Briccialdi: Potpourri Fantastico

This album was nominated for a Grammy award in 2006.

New Century Saxophone Quartet: Standards

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Singelee Quartet No. 1, Desenclos Quartet, del Borgo Quartet, Mintzer Quartet No. 1, Torke July

Recommending gear for beginners

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Photo, sekihan

A beginning instrumentalist needs good equipment. For young woodwind players that means instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, and probably a few other accessories. They aren’t cheap, and the array of options is bewildering. Where can students and their parents turn for solid recommendations?

The ideal situation is for the student to connect with a qualified, conscientious private instructor before making any purchases or signing any rental agreements. In my private teaching experience, this has happened exactly 0% of the time. It’s a nice dream.

For many young beginners, the best counsel they’ve got is the school band director. But what, exactly, do school band directors know about, say, clarinet mouthpieces? I have the greatest respect for school band directors. But I think that scenarios like this probably happen pretty often:

  • A fine, talented, studious young man or woman, who plays, let’s say, the trombone, signs up for the woodwind methods class required for their music education degree.
  • The brilliant and respected professor, who plays, let’s say, the flute, and who is doing his or her level best to teach several instruments in which he or she does not have any specific training, puts in phone calls to some colleagues and picks their brains for their best recommendations for clarinet mouthpieces. Several of them mention one particular model. The professor types up a class handout, listing that specific mouthpiece as an affordable and high-quality option, suitable to most beginners.
  • The young aspiring music educator accepts the handout, studies it, successfully answers a test question about good student clarinet mouthpieces, and files the handout away for future reference.
  • Ten years into the educator’s career, the mouthpiece company merges with another company. Decisions are made by non-clarinetists wearing expensive suits in a well-appointed conference room. The mouthpiece makers are laid off, and mouthpiece production moves to an overseas factory. The mouthpieces look much the same as before and bear the same brand name and model number, but the quality drops significantly, as does the manufacturing cost. The suit-wearing non-clarinetists get large bonuses.

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Woodwind teaching resources for school band directors (and others)

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If you are teaching a woodwind methods course, you might be interested in my book.

Photo, Nick Findley

Students in my woodwind methods classes are usually music education majors, planning careers as school band directors. In my class, they get their one-semester crash course in playing and teaching the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Clearly there’s a lot of information that they will need but which will be easily forgotten—I can’t give a trumpet player three weeks to learn to play the clarinet, and then expect her to remember many fingerings once the playing test is done, the clarinet is returned, and I’ve given her a bassoon contend with.

So I have them prepare a woodwind notebook over the course of the semester, with lecture notes, class handouts, fingering charts, and other things that will hopefully be valuable resources to them in their teaching careers.

One of the things I ask them to include in the notebook is some resources that they have discovered independently. The idea here is to have them find things that they think they will need, and to become acquainted with some good sources for woodwind information along the way. I tell them that information found on the web will only count if I think it’s reliable, and I encourage them to send me links for advance approval.

Usually my classes figure out that I can’t very well reject anything they print from my website, so I usually see a lot of my own stuff appearing in their notebooks. I don’t object to this as long as they choose well, but sometimes they don’t. Last semester’s submissions included my review of the AKAI EWI 4000s, which, of course, is not part of our curriculum, and even some of my links pages, which become considerably less useful on paper, since you can’t click through to the good stuff.

So I figured I might as well share my own selection of posts from this blog that I would encourage future band directors, or other woodwind players or educators, to put in their notebooks:

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December links digest

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I try not to just dump lists of links very often, but here are a few fun items that didn’t warrant their own full posts: Flutists in the news: NASA astronaut Cady Coleman makes music in outer space. Artist Matthias Adolfsson proposes some new members of the woodwind family. Musicians can save the world, over … Read more

From WindWorks Design: Wind controller in a pit orchestra

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Photo, mabel.sound

“Gertjan” at the WindWorks Design blog posted some interesting comments about using a wind controller in a local production of Seussical the Musical. Gertjan (I wasn’t able to positively identify him from the WindWorks website, but maybe he will find his way here and let us know who he is) played saxophones in the show as well, and used the wind controller to cover a number of wind and non-wind instrument parts.

Although it gives me a little indigestion to see a wind controller substituting for woodwinds that might otherwise have been played by a doubler, I do think there is application for wind controllers in orchestra pits. Keyboard-driven synthesizers are ubiquitous in recent shows (or are sometimes used to replace other instruments, especially a string section), and, in some cases, a wind synth might be even better suited to certain kinds of synthesizer parts. Gertjan mentions some synthy sounds like “vocal doo,” “scary voices,” and “ghostly shimmering breathy sound,” all of which strike me as likely to be very effective with a wind synthesizer’s breath control. Some others, like “harp” and “tinkle bell” seem like they might be more intuitively assigned to a keyboard.

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Multiple woodwinds commission, sixth movement (multiple woodwinds or piccolo)

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Photo, vpickering

Dr. Sy Brandon has posted his work on the sixth and final movement of the Divertissement for multiple woodwinds soloist and piano.

In some early communication, Dr. Brandon suggested that this movement, the “Galop,” be written for piccolo. I was happy with this idea, and even dusted off my piccolo to start getting my chops in shape. But by the next day he had hit on a new idea that I liked even better: using the sixth movement to bring back each of the five previously-featured instruments in one tour-de-force finale.

While I was pleased to have this piece include a chance to show off my skills at switching instruments on the fly, I did think that this might limit the number of doublers who could perform the piece. I like the idea of a piece custom-tailored to my specific skill set, but, on the other hand, I would like to see the piece become a significant addition to the limited repertoire for woodwind doublers.

The problem, of course, is that a “doubler” might play any combination of instruments, and a piece for five specific instruments does drastically narrow the field of capable performers. My initial hope was that the piece might be adaptable to individual doublers’ abilities, either by selectively omitting movements or by providing alternate instrumentations.

Dr. Brandon, unsurprisingly, was two steps ahead of me. He has announced two different versions of the sixth movement: one version is for piccolo, and the other is for doubler playing flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone—the instruments used individually in the preceding movements—plus a brief surprise appearance by the piccolo at the very end.

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Conrad Asklund on finding woodwind doublers

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Photo, davekellam From a blog post by musical director Conrad Asklund back in 2006: How do you find woodwind players that can each double on 4-5 instruments? You can’t—assuming you do not have a budget to hire session players (which really, only session or union players are going to be able to pull off all … Read more

Farewell: James Moody

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Woodwind doubler and jazz great James Moody passed away today. James Moody was known for his saxophone (especially tenor) and flute playing. You can read the obituary from the San Diego Union-Tribune, but, if you’re like me, you might rather just watch this. I love the weirdly humorous but deeply respectful intro by none other … Read more

Multiple woodwinds commission, fifth movement (oboe)

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Sy Brandon has shared his work on the fifth movement of Divertissement, the newly-commissioned piece for multiple woodwinds soloist with piano. This movement, “Romanza,” features the oboe, and completes the total count of five woodwind instruments. Dr. Brandon has indicated that there are six movements planned, and I know he has been toying with the … Read more

Introducing the Fingering diagram builder

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I’m pleased to present something I’ve been working on, on and off, for a while now. I’m pretty excited about it, and I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.

This project developed from my own need to quickly and easily create fingering diagrams for the woodwind instruments that I play and teach. Frequently I find myself scribbling saxophone altissimo fingerings onto a scrap of paper during a private lesson, cutting-and-pasting at the photocopier to put together simplified charts for a woodwind methods class, or penciling cryptic markings into musical scores to remind myself which pinky finger to use.

And so, I’m pleased to introduce the Fingering diagram builder. I hope you’ll take it for a spin.

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