Blog Tweaks

I’m in the throes of tweaking various parts of the Blog today - Sunday, 20th December. If there are links that are not working, you’re looking for an article you can’t find or a photo isn’t loading, etc., please bear with me! These changes should be complete by this evening. Many thanks for your patience.

Is Classical Music Suffering from an Overdose of “Passion”?

"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music" - Angela Monet

Having a little parley through my Twitter lists the other evening, which is rather like a cyber bar crawl minus the alcohol, I was struck by how many musicians and critics are becoming increasingly irritated by the constant use of the word “passion” when used to describe a style of playing.  Being guilty as charged – in fact, I confess to applying that noun to almost every aspect of my life (washing up and cleaning out cat litter trays excepted), my interest was piqued, I started wondering why “passion” seemed to be so á la mode these days to the extent that a general bored malaise is beginning to creep in.

A quick search on Google reveals that “passion” is everywhere - not only in the obvious places where you would expect to find it!  The word has stealthily crept into such unlikely markets as architecture, science and engineering. Whilst I personally can’t imagine getting too worked up about skyscraper design, amoeba under microscopes or circuit board improvements, it seems that there are plenty of people who do get turned on by such things. And, as the German poet Hebbel said – “Nothing great in the world has ever been achieved without passion”.

So it seems that just like pigging out on blueberry muffins and dozens of lattés, you can have too much of a good thing. As the word becomes increasingly hackneyed, the main problem is that when used, the real contextual meaning and emphasis is lost.

I am enthusiastic almost to the point of obsession with my clarinet playing and classical music in general; when I play my aim is to stir powerful and compelling emotion in the audience; sometimes my practice sessions are so frustrating, I feel as if I’m suffering like a martyr. All these statements are true. Equally true is the fact the all the words in bold are definitions of “passion”. So am I just not supposed to use the word anymore because people are fed up with it? I concur with another German writer, Carl W Beuchner – “People are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them”.

The Why – Happiness/Fulfilment/Satisfaction Quotient

A number of academic studies have shown that the happiest  people walking around on the planet right now are those who are spending their waking hours “doing what they love” i.e., activities that they are “passionate” about. My own experience is certainly proof of that. That’s not to say my every waking hour is perfect – far from it. However, there is world of difference between being true to yourself and slavishly following the dictates of what society deems to be “proper”. If your heart isn’t in something you ought to butt out. The Art of Non-Conformity is a brilliant resource on the subject which you can find here: http://chrisguillebeau.com 

Daring to be Different – The Same Old, Same Old…

Jacob Stockinger’s excellent blog at http://welltempered.wordpress.com/2009/10 documents the arrival of Venezuela-born conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Very telling were Jacob’s comments – “He has been dubbed the “Latin Lenny” because he shares the youth and passion and teacherly mission and wild style of Leonard Bernstein when he first came to national attention in the 1940s” and “ He has been called the Barack Obama of classical music because he is Latino, a non-white in that most Euro-white world of classical music” (bold type mine). The end of the post says it all – “Dudamel is a gift and, considering sagging classical music ticket and CD sales, he arrives just when we need him most”.

It seems to me that with Classical Music in crisis (have a read of Greg Sandow on http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow) what is needed is  more passion, vision and energy as opposed to less.  It’s just a pity that “passion” is being overused as a word in an effort to differentiate from what has been before. To quote Buechner again – “They may forget what you said (played), but they will never forget how you made them feel”. Maybe, just maybe, a perfect technique is no longer enough although in my book this should not be used for an excuse for a less than fluid performance. It is perhaps there that the problem lies.

Jumping on the Bandwagon and “Passion is in the Ear of the Listener”

As I have stated many time before in this blog, I am not personally bowled over by a flawless technical performance alone. When you search record labels for clarinet performances, say of Brahms, as rendered by the latest techno whizz kid, the list is empty. What I’m looking for is the whole package – tonal quality, musicality (e.g., a different interpretation of a cadenza or phrasing rather than the typical I’ve heard a hundred times before) – a rendition that evokes some kind of emotion as well as a technique good enough for the music to be the focus rather than notational errors. Passion is subjective and as such in “the ear of listener”. It cannot be forced so there is little mileage in jumping on the “passion” bandwagon thinking by doing so you are destined for success. The only true test is your audience – a growing number of bums on seats but not at the expense of  sacrificing your values just to conform to the norm.

Conclusions

I’m not going to stop using the words “passion” or “passionate” to describe myself and my music. However, if I’m going to be “walking my talk”, it’s clear that I’m going to have to dig out my Thesaurus and start finding a new vocabulary to express similar concepts. Or maybe that’s just the old rebel in me which has never really gone away? Oh well, the new web site content will be proof of that – watch this space!

The Benefits of Slow Clarinet Practice

Following on very neatly from my last post, my Twitter friend David Thomas (principal of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra) who I have mentioned on several occasions, has just posted a very informative article on the benefits of Slow Practice. It just begs to be shared.

Here is the link: http://blog.davidhthomas.net/2009/11/deep-vacation-slow-practice

As a clarinettist who is working on improving fluidity in her own technique, I picked up several good ideas which I intend to make a permanent fixture in my own practice sessions next week. I have found that since studying the Debussy Premiere Rhapsody for the album, I seem to have picked up a psychological hatred of trills, so the drills he suggests will be especially useful. 

I encourage you to take a look.

Classical Music Blogs Netiquette

All Your Own Work?

I been watching the daily visits to this blog rising at an incredible rate over the last couple of months. It’s always encouraging to learn that people bother to read the thousands of words that I churn out, albeit with sporadic production on my part at times.

If you don’t blog yourself, are you aware that posts of around a thousand words can take up to 2-3 hours to produce? Yup – that long.  So just imagine how I feel when I receive comments or get added as a recommended link to other blogs. Of course I’m ecstatic! I really appreciate folk who take the trouble to input feedback of whatever sort. This “dialogue” motivates me to be more consistent in posting – constancy in anything other than playing my clarinet has always been a challenge!

Now - I’m a naturally curious soul and following up the “Trackbacks”, “Pings”, etc., from whence individuals have arrived then passing further on down the Internet chain, I am finding some my material replicated almost verbatim elsewhere – I’m thinking particularly of  the Marketing for Classical Musicians series. On one hand, I’m chuffed  – I’m clearly writing on subjects of value that are being shared and one of my “reasons for being” is to inform and inspire. On the other, I find myself getting rather angry when a “rehashed” i.e., clearly plagiarised article is presented neither with reference to source, nor a link back to this blog.

Isn’t it basic “Netiquette” to cite references when your words are not original?

Nothing would please me more – except say, winning an international clarinet competition – than any of the articles that I write being spread all over the Internet. This isn’t a question of satisfying my ego; it is one of validation i.e., what I am writing is interesting and useful to other people. However, if you do use my material, I would have thought that it is a common courtesy to quote my name and/or link back to this blog.

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like this. Many bloggers I know expend a lot of energy and can count an infinite number of man hours expended on order to provide you with a free resource. The least you can do in my book is to acknowledge our work.

Would you present a University thesis or Doctorate paper without references to the sources that assisted you in reaching your conclusion?

Please think about that one the next time you are tempted to just “cut and paste”. 

I believe passionately in keeping information free within the public domain but equally, a little bit of respect would be appreciated.

Autumn Reflections in Andalusia III: Cat and Dog Inc.

Charlie the Cat Terrorist

It had been a major project: trapping and neutering Mummy Tabby, Cleo, Crosseyes and Squeaky, the “outside cats” who inhabit a rather fetching yellow and brown plastic semi-detached residence on our front patio. Naranja (Orange) – so named because a quarter of her face and two paws are that colour in contrast with the rest of her black – had been “seen to” a couple of years ago and she completes the al fresco colony.

The Fabby Four foster kittens: Flobey, Oscar, Nena and Marga - who I watched being born on April 1st had more or less strolled in of their own accord soon after they had weaned. Oscar immediately made himself at home and settled on my chest one night when I was minding my own business watching TV. His friend Flobey sauntered in next. Clearly the word had gotten out in the neighbourhood that the Harrington-Vandeville household was a pretty hip place for felines to hang out because Nena and Marga arrived soon afterwards, the latter rather reluctantly trailing her sister.

Having caught Flobey ”en flagrante” with Nena on a couple of occasions in October, it was clear that the time had come for the old “chop-chop” visit to the vets if we were to avoid future catlettes. Besides, as it is our intention to find permanent homes for these little guys, I figured it should be easier if future pet parents could be assured that the “ever-present danger” of reproduction had already been quashed. I am so thankful for my animal rescue contacts without whom, both practically and financially, it would have been impossible to even start tackling stemming the local stray animal population. The division of labour has meant me freely giving my time and supplying the brawn, which I’m happy to do, whilst the charities have donated the means – a very fair deal and it has worked out so well.

Oscar unfortunately broke his jaw about a month ago after Spousette had found Charlie the puppy in a rubbish skip. We managed to place the dog in a small refuge very quickly but not until after we had all passed a rather stressful weekend chez nous. It turned out that 3-month old Charlie enjoyed chasing little cats. Attempting to execute what amounted to an animal version of the Middle East peace process, due to lack of concessions by all sides, we failed dismally as negotiators. At one point Oscar ended up the top of the fig tree and had to be coaxed down with the aid of chicken slices and a ladder, only to slip out of my hands, shoot up a boundary wall, misjudge the distance and fall over the other side into a pile of rubble. Marga found an excellent hide-way tucked behind the motor of the swimming pool but wouldn’t budge even after Charlie had been secured for a couple of hours. Flobey requisitioned the pear tree, got bored and fell asleep on a branch. Nena took the easy option, fled inside and hid under the bed. An urgent case-fire solution had to be found which entailed the entire household grounded for two whole days whilst Charlie happily dug holes in the garden.

With pup safely ensconced in the refuge (“he’s a delight” said Pat, his foster Mum), Oscar went under anaesthetic to have his jaw fixed by his veterinary dentist and we took the opportunity to have him neutered at the same time which left his three siblings booked into the vets for 16th November.

Just as I was in the middle of congratulating myself for solving the cat problem virtually single-handedly, another little challenge arrived withour warning. Spousette and I were out in the garden on one of our regular 15 minute power breaks with me chattering away as usual when Ana suddenly went very pale and just pointed down to an area under the trees which I had neglected for “nature to enjoy” i.e., it was full of weeds. There in the middle of the jostling green, looking downcast and completely lost was a kitten of about two months with very similar makings to Naranja, except of course to suggest it was hers was a biological impossibility.

He/she has been christened Mandarina, being a smaller version of Naranja.

Flobey and Mandarina Relax

So it seems, just like the Hadron Collider, the project had merely paused as opposed to being completed. Should you be able to offer any of our foster cats a home – do get in touch. Details on the Contact page.

Autumn Reflections in Andalusia II: Plans for Location Independence

The Internet Has Turned the Traditional Concept of Work on It's Head

Over the last year I have grown particularly interested in the concept of “location independence” i.e., designing your life where actual physical presence in any one place for a set amount of time is irrelevant. You could think of it as taking the concept of being freelance and going global. Without doubt the internet has given us the opportunity to turn the traditional work model completely on its head where we can not only choose where we live but also create our own economy. There is something rather attractive about being mobile enough to live wherever your career or the muse happens to take you, armed only with laptop, instruments and a suitcase. I am very much encouraged that growing numbers of people appear to be taking up the challenge, the Spousette and myself included.

I was already a keen reader of Lea and Jonathan Woodward’s web site and blog at http://www.locationindependent.com so when the opportunity came up to join their Roundtable mentoring programme, I jumped at the chance. A combination of 1:1 tuition, collective small group mastermind sessions, online exercises and forum feedback make for a winning combination. In only a few weeks my brain has gone into such overdrive that my previously very modest 2010 business plans have grown from just publishing a book on marketing into what one of the gurus, Andy Hayes( http://www.andyhayes.com) calls the Mazza Empire-lol!

Just to whet your appetite and create a buzz of anticipation (?) the strategy goes something like this:

• The first to be published in 2010 will be my portfolio site http://www.marionharringtonclarinet.com. This will include MP3 extracts from the album and I suspect will have a design that is a bit “off the wall”
• Following closely in its wake, a more general site covering  two main subjects of a “How To” nature which should be of interest to all classical musicians who are looking for alternative non-musical tools and resources to help them to succeed in the music industry.
• In the midst of this second stage, my current blog and/or Twitter branding is likely to change.
• With branding complete, another 14 sites will be systematically rolled out over the course of 2010-2011. These will all have the same format but be more individually specialised.

If you have “big ideas” don’t let the fact that you lack the means or knowledge to follow them through deter you. It is simply a question of surrounding yourself with people who do have the resources and “know how”. I could never have imagined that with some business coaching and creative thought a small idea could mushroom into a large entity with a life of its own.

If you can take on board and accept that these days most classical musicians need to develop ”portfolio careers”,i.e., generate income from multiple sources, ask yourself whether you would prefer to wait on tables or sit at your laptop developing a business that embraces your passion when you’re not actually practicing or performing.

With some focused application on the business strategy and once the album is complete, it’s exciting to think that Spousette and I should be on our way to Location Independence Stop 1: France, if all goes well, in the Spring of 2010. Or maybe another opportunity will pop up elsewhere? The beauty of the location independent lifestyle is that total flexibility of location. I do believe I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve!

Be vigilant and open to opportunities “outside the norm”. 

Who makes the “rules” anyway?

Autumn Reflections in Andalusia I: Album Update

How Can Such Innocent Instruments Cause So Much Angst?

The Harrington-Vandeville household, otherwise known as the Mazza-Spousette residence, is currently a hive of positive buzzing activity. As we near the end of 2009, as is usual at this time of year, I become very retrospective. I’m never sure whether I enjoy looking back or looking forward the most. Reviewing the past 12 months is useful and cathartic – celebrating progress and triumphs, learning from errors and mistakes, perhaps re-living experiences. Then there is the breathless anticipation and optimism of the year to come – plans to be made, goals to be set, the sense of “anything is possible”, the chance to wipe the slate clean.

Album Session 1:  Having conducted a detailed and agonised analysis, there are sections which I have elected to re-record. For this reason, my “Secret Gang of Four” reviewers will have to wait a little while longer to hear the fruits of my labours. As I listened with the scores alongside, the questions I posed myself were: ”Is this performance of a high enough quality to expect people to pay for the CD or MP3 tracks?” and “Is my playing good enough to inspire and set a good example” – obviously within the confines of my own sometimes “liberal” interpretations.

This exercise called for a brutal honesty and it was emotionally draining. There were episodes where I noted that the technical fluency of a true professional was lacking. Spousette described it as “You can sometimes tell that you haven’t been doing this your whole life” – ouch! Bearing in mind that all the notes were in the right order throughout so the only way I can extrapolate on this concept is to say that in parts of the Debussy Premiere Rhapsody, what I call “flow” is absent. There are phrases which sound difficult – hardly the point for your average classical music lover. The last movement of the Saint-Saens Sonata would benefit from a bit more work on the ensemble between piano and clarinet. A couple of “almost split notes” appeared in the Poulenc which would have gone unnoticed in a live performance – rats

Having now listened to the rough cut many times, my final take is that 60% is good enough to keep.

Album Session 2: Preparations have been going really well but it seems that yet again, Jenny the pianist and I have fallen down in the non-musical communication department. She is off the UK next week and on her return will be preparing for Christmas gigs. We wont be able to meet between now and after December 25th so the net result is that I doubt whether we’ll be able to get Album Part 2 cut before the New Year. Mid to end of January is more realistic.

The delay is certainly not an ideal scenario for me as the Messager, Pierné and Milhaud are just about performance ready and I could do with continuing with the momentum. However, on the plus side, with some decent pacing and planning, I have more time for preparation and serious honing especially on the re-records from session 1.

UK Trip: In my diary I had scheduled to be in the UK for a couple of weeks mid-January but now I am unable to carry pre-public release copies of the album with me, it seemed sensible to postpone the visit. I am not the greatest fan of air travel – it’s so time-consuming these days with all the security – so I am keen to maximise value from the trip.  As well as physically meeting several of my closest Twitter contacts, my clarinets could do with a few minor adjustments so I’ll have to drop them off at Howarth in London, there are a few relatives and friends I’d like to see in the home counties plus some album promotion work. No alternative date has been set yet.

USA Trip: Again because of the session 2 recording delay, the foray across the Atlantic to the West Coast has also been postponed indefinitely until I have completed the album.  

Thoughts: 

• Stressing achieves nothing. Situations just “are” and can only be described as good or bad when we attach an emotional value.
• Let no musician underestimate the time and effort required to produce an album. It most certainly caught me unawares!

Moving Out of the Comfort Zone: Post-Recording Session 1 Analysis

My Piece of Plastic

Clarinettist’s Thumb, Anyone?

I collected the session 1 mastered CD from Pete Ware just 3 days after the recording took place. I have to hand to the guy – he works fast! I would be lying if I said I calmly drove home, put the disc in my player and wept with the joy of such a sensitive and virtuosic performance.  Unfortunately, as real life often doesn’t mirror a movie script, the reality was somewhat different.

In actuality, I hurtled back down the mountain road into the valley where I live with my stomach churning and my brain throwing up random thoughts at 100 miles an hour. It wasn’t sure whether to offer postive expectation phrases or doom and gloom paragraphs. On arrival, in-house photographer was working on her upcoming inspirational coffee table book, sat in exactly the same position at the computer as when I had left the house an hour earlier. The cats had carried on sleeping; the dogs wearily lifted their heads and then let them slump down again. Depositing the coveted CD in my in-tray, I wandered out to the kitchen to tackle a pile of washing up. I sighed. ”I’ll listen to it later when I can concentrate properly”.

Halfway through attacking the plates, I vaguely heard some clarinet music warbling away in the background. Certain that I had recognised the Saint-Saens Sonata, the scouring came to an abrupt halt as I strained my ears to listen a bit more intently. Quickly realising in a flash what was going on, I grabbed a tea-towel to dry my hands and rushed into the office. The dogs were up out of their baskets and the cats had woken up and walked out - their usual response when I start to practice! The volume of the computer was up full blast and in quadrophonic sound, my clarinet playing was reverberating around the room. I felt as if I was witnessing an event that I didn’t want to see but some unseen force had me temporarily rooted to the spot. In-house photographer continued to noodle. I just wasn’t ready for this - not now, anyway; and I went back to my washing up.

I listened to the CD on my portable player after dinner one night a few days later. This time, the music had my full attention but as a listener not the wost of damning critics. As I sat on my patio looking up the stars spread out on the canopy of a clear night sky, I mused. You’ve come a long way in 18 months, Harrington – the second movement of the Poulenc had made me cry. A certain sentiment had permeated through the music and forced me to remember yet again the mental pain I had fairly recently experienced and drew on during the preparation period for the session. The Debussy bought me back down to earth with a hard thud – it lacked the smooth technical fluency that I was used to hearing on other recordings and this detracted from my enjoyment of the piece. I wallowed in a couple of movements of the Saint-Saens but started beating myself up in the last so I turned it off and went to bed.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I could find the psychological strength within myself to sit down with the scores and conduct a full objective analysis. Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised and pleased with the result but it’s not perfect. Putting that statement in context, the question on which I have to make a decision is whether or not I’m convinced that it’s good enough unleash on the general public. Most of it – yes – but as always there is room for improvement. I will most definitely re-record a couple of movements which went down at the end of session. I was tired at the time and I can hear fatigue in the performance which is simply not acceptable to me. What I want to avoid at all costs is nit-picking my way through every piece and repeating odd phrases here and there just for the sake of being note perfect. There is always the danger that the spirit of the music will be lost and I most certainly do not want my playing to dissolve into just being about reproducing the notes in the right order!

Session 2 is scheduled to take place at the end of November. It’s a much lighter programme: the Messager Solo de Concours, Pierné’s Canzonetta and the Milhaud Duo Concertant. I’m not sure at this stage whether to tag the repeats from session 1 to the end of session 2 or wait to hear the mastering of session 2 before diarising a session 3 just for re-records. I’ll think on it.

In the meantime, along with the practical preparation for session 2, there are CD programme notes to write and the design for the insert to complete. I have also appointed a “Secret Gang of Four Reviewers” who have agreed, lured by the thought of free copy of the final product, to give their constructive criticism before I give the order for mass production. I’ll certainly be kept out of mischief over the next few weeks!

Moving Out of the Comfort Zone: A Day Recording with Debussy, Poulenc and Saint-Saens

I've Heard of Working at Home but the Kitchen?

The day of the recording I woke to my alarm at 0600 as usual and just followed my normal routine. There was one major difference – I had a horrible knot in my stomach which wouldn’t go away. I’d clearly forgotten one of the unwanted side effects of performance!

When I set myself the goal of producing an album at the beginning of the year, I didn’t own a decent pair of professional instruments, couldn’t imagine where I would find a pianist to accompany me in the middle of rural Spain and had no idea once I had the coveted album in my possession, how on earth I was going to market and distribute. All I had was a very clear vision as to where I wanted to go and a burning desire to get there.

New instruments were generously gifted to me at the end of January with little effort on my part except for daily visualisation exercises. Jenny the pianist, like Pete the music engineer, was an old client of mine from my early days in business but with no real knowledge of her private life, the only reason I found her was because of a chance meeting with a social acquaintance in March who happened be at the house of a close friend who had just arrived back from a two year trip to Mexico. In April Jenny and I started playing together. The marketing and distribution plan gradually took shape  around another so called “coincidental” internet encounter.

It had been an extraordinary journey to date and now here I was, poised at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Little wonder I was nervous. In addition of course, there had been hours of practice, many private tears of frustration, sometimes colossal self-doubt and yet, I had clung on with my typical dogged determination and sights firmly fixed on my purpose almost to the point of obsession. The training period was complete. Now it was showtime.

How can I describe the lonely feeling of standing in front of a mic, a deathly silence all around waiting for my indication for the piano to sound the opening bars of the Debussy Premiére Rhapsodie? It was as if my entire life had culminated in one concentrated spot. Time had frozen. I centred myself, breathed deeply and nodded to Jenny to begin.

We started at 1200 and finished at 1700 with a 1/2 hour break for a bite to eat. I’m not sure how I managed to play solidly for so long. My cold sore blew up like a balloon and was painful especially in the upper altissimo register but I refused to throw in the towel. I’d waited so long for this I wasn’t prepared to wimp out now.

The session lasted far longer than I expected. I naively thought that I’d get away with a couple of hours. However, I hadn’t factored in Pete wanting to repeat a couple of sections due to me bumping a mic-twice-and then I couldn’t  pull off the same bits to my satisfaction; fatigue affecting performance and falling into the temptation of wanting to tweak when in actual fact the movement had been perfect the first time round.  There were times during the session when I thought I was going to weep with tiredness; others when I was ecstatic for pulling off a difficult phrase. It was a true emotional roller-coaster ride.

The experience has certainly changed my view of recorded music. Whilst CDs and MP3s give the listener a chance to appreciate a composer’s work and give taste of a certain interpretation, no longer will I use a CD or MP3 to form a particular opinion about any player. Theoretically, although extremely labour intensive, you could record a piece without necessarily being “performance ready”; the wonders of modern computing can tweak the sound so the final result bears absolutely no resemblance to real life for good or for ill. So for me now, only a live performance or unedited video will elicit any sort of opinion.

Recording can be soul destroying if you let it. Playing in a dead acoustic every note seems completely exposed and you could easily judge yourself as the worst clarinettist who ever walked the earth however skilled you may be. Hearing a brief “raw” playback, my normal round dark tone didn’t sound as it usually does to my ear; it was more pure somehow – not thin at all but focused. I’m suppose I’m just going to have to wait for mastering session tomorrow before I can pass judgement.

It's a Wrap!! No Wonder We're Smiling with Relief!

Moving Out of the Comfort Zone: Preparing for a Recording Session

*Gulp* Am I Really Doing This?

As part of the strategy for relaunching my career as a classical clarinettist, a key part of the plan was producing an album for public release. If you read my blog regularly, you might remember that part 1 of this project had been delayed, for various reasons, from June. The delay was positive in that it gave me more time to prepare but negative in regards to the fact that “getting stale” had become a real issue. As the 15th October grew closer, I reached the stage where my boredom threshold had been well and truly breached. Quite frankly, I was ready to posthumously decapitate Debussy, disembowel Poulenc and string up Saint-Saens if I had to keep their works performance ready one damn more day.

What saved my sanity was a classic “Aha” moment watching a programme on French TV the w/end prior to R-Day (as I called the event on my Twitter posts. It was a documentary about their great poet/composer/singers like Gainsbourg, Brel and Ferrat. What struck me was that they didn’t just sing the notes, they actually LIVED their music when they were performing. The light bulb in my brain didn’t just switch on – it exploded. At last I could finally understand the drive and motivation behind hour upon hour of my practise sessions, week after week. It wasn’t just an elusive search for perfect technique, I knew that already. What these amazing individuals had help me to discover was that my main purpose is not in demonstrating I have the best technique in the clarinet world (which I most definitely have not!) or some deep seated childhood desire for approval. My purpose is to use music to reach out to others: to say to them “yeah – I’ve been there, I understand and hey listen to this Sonata, so did that guy Poulenc. This theory is extremely logical if you know anything about my *ahem* rather colourful working career.  Well, that’s all very woo-woo and fluffy, touchy, feely stuff you may think. No it isn’t. The process to realise this purpose involves plumbing the depths of sometimes painful emotional memories and  dragging them into what amounts to public view via the medium of music. I guess this also explains why flash-harry techno wonder kids who can play notes at a speed of light leave me cold whilst less technically competent performances (the 12-year-old Bliss performing the Messager Solo de Concours, for example) have me in raptures if not in tears. The thought has occurred to me that perhaps I should start quantifying my performance quality via the value of Kleenex shares as opposed to album sales!

I want to challenge you, and this fits in neatly with the Marketing for Classical Musicians series: on an emotional level why are you doing what you do and what are you trying to achieve?

“Living the music” kept me on track with my practice schedule in the three days that preceded what I called “my date with destiny”. Over the top perhaps in the circumstances, but what I was about to do is scary stuff – well out of my comfort zone.

Finding a recording studio in southern Spain had proved easy enough. Amazingly there was one in my own small rural village. In a former life as sole director of my own company, Pete Ware, a recording engineer from the UK moved his family here a few years ago and sought advice from my company on Spanish bureaucratic issues. We had lost touch more recently but it was just a question of picking up the phone and meeting up which we did. A recording studio with a grand piano was another matter entirely. Hiring one would cost €800 + 16% sales tax – definitely a no brainer for my bank account! Pete suggested that providing the acoustic was favourable from his point of view, there was no reason why the deed could not be done “on location” at my pianist’s house, as he was used to recording live concerts. He had had over 30 years experience in the industry and I had no reason not to trust his judgement.

A visit to Jenny di Paolo and her husband Amadeo (5 minutes drive up the road, down a track and over a river bed) proved positive.  I had always found the acoustic there difficult during rehearsals: low ceilings and thick walls hung with tapestries deaden the sound but Pete was delighted as it mimicked the conditions in his studio back home. In any case, short of renting the huge state of the art village theatre, there was no other choice. Rather amusing how Spain can be a country of such contrasts.

Knowing that acoustic as well as altitude can colour reed choice, the afternoon before R-Day, saw me at Jenny’s place again, this time testing reeds for some glimmer of inspiration and calming of nerves. I’d played a series of 5 in well. It was going to be difficult choice.

Adding to the joy of the last preparation days, I sustained a wasp sting at a BBQ on the Sunday which had made my right hand swell up like a balloon plus the most ugly of cold sores graced the exact part of my lip where the reed sat. There was no way I was going to postpone now. The show just had to go on.