The International Clarinet Association’s annual ClarinetFest was 22-26 July 2015, this time in Madrid. My first year attending was 2013 in Assisi, where I came as a spectator, but ended up performing with the European Clarinet Association ensemble. Last year was in Baton Rouge, where I performed Stockhausen’s Solo fur Melodieinstrument und Rückkopplung.
This year I performed with my new ensemble, Shadanga Duo. We played part of our program from our concert in Århus last December, which consisted of the Elliott Carter Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux, and two of our new commissions, Louis Aguirre’s Yalodde Yeyé Kari and Hannes Kerschbaumer’s gryet.debris. Even though we had performed it before, with four times more pieces as well, it was still quite a challenging program. The Carter is just a rhythmical monster that improves every time we play it, the Kerschbaumer is a bit in the vein of the new-complexity school with lots of small elements going on at once to create an effect, and the Aguirre, which requires a synchronicity between the flute and clarinet that demands all of our concentration in the first movement, and all of our energy in the second. We think it’s a pretty impressive program that makes an impact on the listeners. According to some of the comments we got afterwards, that was true! We managed to make a good impression on some other really great players, so for what’s really only our second concert as a duo, we’re rather pleased.
This year I also got to play in three other concerts. The first was a tribute concert for the legendary Harry Sparnaay, champion of the bass clarinet. Harry is, essentially, the reason I moved to Amsterdam in the first place, and the reason that I have the rich musical life that I now enjoy. Last year Harry turned 70 and has retired from playing, and at this ClarinetFest was being given an award and honorary membership in the International Clarinet Association for his lifetime achievement. The concert consisted of two pieces for bass clarinet ensembles, Karel Goeyvaerts’ Song of Aquarius, conducted by Fie Schouten and featuring Sauro Berti, Sarah Watts, Matthias Müller, Hector Abella, Hugo Queriós, Paolo de Gaspari, Jason Alder, Dick Nunemaker, Tim Bonenfant, Tod Kerstetter, Laura Carmichael, and Paul Roe; and Tobias Klein’s “Too Dark to Read” conducted by Sauro Berti, and featuring Oguz Büyükberber, Matthias Müller, Fie Schouten, Stephan Vermeersch, Paolo de Gaspari, Laura Carmichael, and Héctor Abella, Paul Roe on bass clarinet, and Tobias Klein, Timothy Bonenfant, and Paul Roe on contrabass clarinets.
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The next concert was the following morning, for the European Clarinet Association. Again, the bass clarinet had a proud showing with Jon Russell’s Supra for 9 bass clarinets. This one was a bit of a surprise, as I wasn’t originally scheduled to play it, but had to step in last minute to cover for someone else. Luckily I could be at the rehearsal the day before and do it! It was a lot of fun to play, and again with an amazing cast of players including Jon playing the solo part himself, Fie Schouten, Hugo Queirós, Laura Carmichael, Jason Alder, Matthias Müller, Rocco Parisi, Sarah Watts, and Sauro Berti on the other 8 bass clarinet, and conducted by Hedwig Swimberghe.
Harry Sparnaay was also at this concert, and after the piece came on stage with other bass clarinet sympathizers for a photo-op.
The rest of the concert included performances from our esteemed ECA president, Stephan Vermeersch, and the Stark Quartet. We concluded with Antonio Fraioli’s Concertino Stile Jazz with Nuno Pinto playing the solo and an ensemble of Conductor: Antonio Saiote, Eb Clar: Francisco José Gil, Bb Clar 1: Sergio Bosi, Céleste Zewald, Andrija Blagojevic, Bence Szepesi, Jason Alder, Bb Clar 2: Sergio Neves, Milos Mijatovic, Antonio Fraioli, Bass Clar 1: Dick Nunemaker, Hugo Queirós, Bass Clar 2: Paul Roe, Sergio Brusca, and Contrabass: Tim Bonenfant
My last performance was on the D’Addario Artists concert, one of the main sponsors of the event. This one was amazing! A really fun piece by Arthur Gottschalk called The Kaleidoscopic Pocket Hockets Boogaloo. 8 bass clarinet and 2 contrabass clarinet, of which I was one. A real show-stopper, grooving, funny piece… again with amazing players: Nuno Pinto, Sauro Berti, Michael Norsworthy, Luís Gomes, Rocco Parisi, Karel Dohnal, Pedro Rubio, and Hugo Queirós on bass clarinet, and Tim Bonenfant and Jason Alder on contrabass clarinet, with Stephan Vermeersch conducting. Words don’t even do this performance justice… just watch the video!
Another great outcome of this year’s ClarinetFest was my newly refaced contrabass clarinet mouthpiece! I knew I’d be playing the Gottschalk piece beforehand, and although I don’t have my own contra (yet!), I have an old Selmer C* mouthpiece. It played well, but after trying out Tim Bonenfant’s Grabner mouthpiece two years ago in Assisi, I knew that my C* could be better. So I contacted Brad Behn of Behn Mouthpieces. I had tried one of Brad’s Bb clarinet mouthpieces in Assisi and kind of fell in love with it, although I couldn’t afford it at the time. The next year in Baton Rouge, he had the exact same one… nobody else had bought it in the year. I tried it again, and still loved it, and bought it. I’m now on the Behn Mouthpieces Artist team, supporting these really great pieces. So I sat down with Brad in Madrid, after the rehearsal for Boogaloo, and he went to work with his measuring tools and sandpaper, tweaking things here and there, back and forth until I can honestly say, it’s the best contrabass clarinet I’ve ever played! It allowed me to blow the shit out of the horn on Boogaloo, which is exactly what the second contra was meant to do on that piece. Stephan Vermeersch and Tim both commented on the difference between the rehearsal and performance. Really great work, Brad!
The bass clarinet representation this year on the whole was fantastic! In addition to the pieces I played on and mentioned here, there were many other solo and duo bass clarinet concerts, notably Hugo Quíeros playing the incredibly difficult pieces, Ferneyhough Time and Motion Study I and Michael Jarrell Assonance II, and doing so superbly; Oguz Büyükberber and Tobias Klein performing one of Tobias’ pieces for two amplified contrabass clarinets, Matthis Müller with his SABRe electronic bass clarinet, who’s backpack got stolen the first night in the hotel and I had to lend him my computer to run the electronics to play his concert! Unfortunately, with playing so much at these festivals, I’m always running around between rehearsals and performances, and trying to squeeze in listening to concerts when I can, so I missed some of the other good performances, such as Divagôö, which I heard good things about, and many of the other solo concerts performed by the bass clarinetists mentioned above in the ensembles.
Overall, it was a great, although slightly chaotic (hey… it’s Spain… what do you expect?) festival. It was nice to have everything under one roof instead of running between buildings in the blistering Spanish summer heat. And there was a beer garden and food trucks right there in the plaza, so what more could we ask for?
Looking forward to the next one!