What can your clarinet do for you?

I am a clarinet player, and though my practicing has been minimal in the past years I do still consider myself one. I love my clarinet and truly adore the tone of the instrument. I play primarily B-flat soprano but have also played B-flat bass and E-flat soprano.
The clarinet, to me, has this beautiful mellow voice that can be very soothing, yet is so versatile. It can sing heartache in a moving lyrical line for Mozart or wail for a Benny Goodman song. Mozart said that he felt it was the closest sound to the human voice. I can hear some of that, I think, if I listen for it. I know that I was glad to start playing it, even though I have never attained that glorious tone that I love. It can sound terrible at first, but even I was able to make it sing a little.

At the concert of the previous post there was a bass clarinet solo (refer to two posts prior). He improvised to some of the animal sound tracks from the Missa Gaia. He made his bass sound like a loon and a whale. He made it growl at the bottom range with the wolves, and shook the instrument even to get the sounds out. He stretched the range to the very top and I sometimes couldn't tell him apart from the loons in the recording. Needless to say, it was beautiful, and not just to a clarinetist and clarinet fan like myself.
Because I am an internet junkie I of course went home and promptly googled the young man's name. Living in the twenty-first century means that most musicians, no matter how professional or how small, have a website. There I was able to listen to more of his original compositions (he composed a very fun piece for our concert) and some performances by him. Then I clicked a link. And I was happy. Sometimes you click the links provided (like my wiki ones above) and nothing grand happens. Other times it leads you on a journey! Well this was a journey - a musical one!

The young man in question is part of a bass clarinet quartet called Edmund Welles who play, well, I'm not sure what to call what they play. They describe themselves as rock and avant-garde. I describe them as cool. They stretch the instrument to its limits and really play with the different kinds of sounds that it can make. Then they layer four basses on top of each other and create a very dense and rich sound. Their website says that they have played not only original compositions but cover rock songs as well. Yes, heavy metal bass clarinet. ^_^

From their site, they have this as an expected set list:
We play one and two-set shows.
Our song types break down roughly into 5 categories:
1) Originals that are hard rockers, often with extended forms: 3-6 minutes each.
2) Originals that are ballads: 2-4 minutes each.
3) Originals that are movements of larger works, these include minimalist/trance pieces and avant jazz works: movements are 4-9 minutes each.
4) Covers/arrangements that are rock or pop songs including songs by Black Sabbath, Sepultura, Spinal Tap, Primus, the Pixies, Duran Duran, the Residents, Nirvana, Sinead O'Connor, and Radiohead.
5) Covers/arrangements that are extremely varied from TV theme songs to Renaissance motets, boogie woogie piano, hard gospel and blues.


The group is out of California and they do travel and play gigs elsewhere. Serious recommendation. They have become my current obsession. When the next pay check clears I may have to stop by CD Baby. If so, totally full review here in the future.

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