Jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco died on December 24 at age 91. When I was in high school, Buddy came to Sioux Falls to play a concert and he was wonderful. The first instrument I learned to play was the clarinet, but I didnt have a good relationship with it, as I wanted to play the saxophone. The junior high band director told my parents that the sax wasnt a legitimate orchestral instrument so I should learn clarinet first and then if I really wanted to play sax I could learn it later. In high school, I ended up being the first chair clarinet in band and orchestra, and in all-state band and orchestra. So I never got the chance to try to play the sax until the end of my senior year. I quickly discovered that I didnt have enough talent to make the switch from clarinet to saxophone easily. After I graduated from high school, I went to North Texas State to try to major in music in their jazz program but failed miserably in my first year and dropped out after one year. I couldnt read any of the sax charts in the big band auditions, and I was terrible at music theory. The only class I got a good grade in was piano. Id only had two months of piano lessons in high school, but I got an A in piano, as I had a teacher who didnt care about my lack of piano background. She had me learn a Bach two-part invention and a Gershwin prelude for my piano juries, which I nailed even though I didnt think I could actually play piano. Years later, I realized that this young Texas piano lady was trying to get me on the right path. So in my fifties, I started trying to learn how to play piano and finally realized the piano is the instrument I was meant to play. I havent thought about the clarinet for decades, but I guess the clarinet is how all my musical adventures started.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 02:08:19 +0000
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