I went to see Fred, the coolest repairman on earth, in a huge hurry after I got my clarinet on Friday. It was torture staying at work all day, once I got the horn - I just wanted to sprint over there like mad thing and see if the horn I bought was any good. I mean, it looked good, but what the heck do I know? Plus of course there was no reed, so I couldn't try it anyway. But you must know to me, like most musicians, instruments themselves are one the most beautiful things made my humans, art that you can play, the form in love with the function. I have found out over the past few days that wood clarinets are made from grenadilla wood from Africa - and the dark wood is really lovely, especially when it contrasts with the nickle silver keys.
I get to the music store and I am big time excited. Fred takes the horn, runs his critical eye over it, checks it out thororughly. As it said in the ad on ebay, the horn had been totally rebuilit, new pads, new corks, oiled up, the whole business.
Finally Fred puts on a good mouthpiece and plays the heck out of it - I can tell you that unlike a lot of repairmen Fred has monster chops - and the horn, it sounds so good I am overjoyed. And I hadn't even played it yet!
Of course I had to buy some things so that I had a complete kit to play on. Fred pointed me towards a good student style mouthpiece, since he told me a pro level model would be much harder for me to learn on. How cool is that, a music store that doesn't try to sell you the most expensive thing? There was some other stuff like reeds, etc. Lets just say that with the horn and all the accessories I still spent less than $350 - for a semi-pro level clarinet! Sometimes I am just lucky!
I rushed home to show Barbara, and she was also pretty excited. Then the moment of truth, can I play the thing at all?
YES YES YES! Its close to the saxphone in some respects as far as embrosure and some of the fingering, so I was really, really happy when I started making music with this. I can learn this thing! And the tone is so wonderfully warm and woody - really wonderful to me.
Later on in the evening Barbara broke out her 'cello and we played thru a tiny exercise together, that is once I figured out the fingering, cause it is not exaclty the same as the sax by any stretch of the imagination - and this was a great thing, the first time ever we have played any music together, after all these years. And the clarinet is a real good match up with the 'cello, unlike the saxophone.
And I am still amazed on how much I don't miss writing music. I will get back to that, but for now, actually playing, as oppsed to writing on the computer, is much, much more compelling. And fun too, did I mention that?
Maybe its selfish, but with all the horror going on in the world, more than ever I need to center myself and my music. The possiblity of learning and making Jewish music is a small and personal thing to me, but isn't it also Tikkun Olan, repairing the world, by increasing the connections between people? Klezmer music certainly makes me feel more attached to my own heritage, and with some luck and hard work perhaps I can spread some of this great music myself.
I read once that Ravi Shankar's teacher told him, music is God, and while I don't know if that is true, music must certainly must put you the path. May it be so in our lifetimes.