I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.
Acker Bilk
I started off playing the clarinet, after I was inspired by listening to my dad's Benny Goodman records.
Alvin Lee
Clarinet is often associated with certain genres, like swing or folk music. I combine the old and new, using the clarinet as an expressive tool and not in one genre. I'm just happy that people are drawn to what I do.
Anat Cohen
We still have to overcome the notion that a clarinet squeaks. People need to remember what a beautiful instrument it is, including in popular music.
Some old people, they remember that they used to play clarinet, and they remember the squeaks of the clarinet. But I don't play like that.
When I play the clarinet, I am 100 percent myself. It is as if it is part of my body. I can play whatever I think. Let me just read a melody and make it as sweet as I can.
My initial training was on the keyboard - mainly the great American songbook. In junior high, during the day, I was a classical clarinetist, but after school, I played New Orleans jazz and big-band music.
I was focusing on sax while at Berklee, but then I started to play Brazilian choro and Colombian music. I was doing more folkloric stuff on the clarinet because it works better. Finally, I realized I was working more on the clarinet than the saxophone, and I started to feel more comfortable on it.
The clarinet is not so dominant in Israeli music as it is in klezmer. I heard klezmer when I was growing up, but for some reason I avoided it. I listened to Louis Armstrong instead. But the sense of melody is the connection between jazz and klezmer.
Clarinet is an incredible instrument. It's a great, expressive instrument.
The clarinet has always been my baby. I just didn't know that for a while.
I'm working really hard to get the clarinet out of that hole, that Benny Goodman thing.
The clarinet chose me more than I chose the clarinet.
When I got into high school, clarinet was not really in fashion. Everybody had electric bands.
I focused on the saxophone ever since high school. It wasn't until my album 'Poetica,' which I recorded in 2006, that I went back to the clarinet. It felt like it was waiting for me!
I'm helping people think the clarinet is cool.
Yeah, musically, from a production standpoint my favorite is probably 'Have a Little Talk with Jesus'. Just the way it turned out production wise with the clarinet and everything, it sounds like something from a movie.
Bart Millard
Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra - besides singing in the college chorus and things like that.
Bobby McFerrin
Artie Shaw was way ahead of most clarinetists and most jazz players.
Buddy DeFranco
I started on the clarinet. I was going to a music school - my mother took me - and the guy said, 'What do you want to play?' I said the drums, and my mother said, 'No, you don't. You don't want to play the drums.' So I said, 'Maybe the trumpet would be cool.' And my mother said, 'I don't think so.' And then the clarinet was handed to me.
Christopher Guest
It couldn't have been more nerdy or bizarre, playing the clarinet. But I studied classical clarinet, went to the high school for music and art in New York City, and then found the guitar and the mandolin after it.
I played the flute in elementary school, but when I got into high school, they didn't have any flutes; they gave me a clarinet and said, 'Play it in the same way, just hold in a different position.' I really didn't care much for it.
I find that classical music helps put me in a place that is very calming and allows me to express emotion through my body. I played clarinet as a child, so I guess I have a bit of a musical ear.
I remember being a kid and wanting to be so many different things. There was even one point that I wanted to be a clarinet player, and I had never even touched a clarinet, in my life. And then, I wanted to be a chef. And then, I wanted to be a vet. It's hard to decide who you're gonna be, as weird as that sounds, because we all do it.
My eyes are too big, my nose is too flat, my ears stick out, my mouth is too big and my face is too small... my body is thin as a clarinet and my ankles are so skinny that I wear two pairs of bobby socks because I don't want people to see how thin they are.
Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
My mother was an opera singer and my father is a clarinet player, composer and conductor.
I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments - guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums.
It's important to recognize how special New Orleans is. You play the snare drum or the clarinet in any other city, and you'd be considered a nerd, but here, there's no shame in it, and it's absolutely valued.
My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.
I'm a little musically inclined; I play the clarinet and the saxophone.
I started playing drums at three, then piano at five, then clarinet. But it wasn't till I picked up a saxophone aged 13 that I really got serious about music.
I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.'
As a musician, your instrument is almost predetermined. I had played drums, piano, clarinet, but when I heard Wayne Shorter play the saxophone, I knew that sound is what I wanted.
I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute... Just not well.
I went to Juilliard as a clarinet major, and somewhere between the beginning and the end, I stopped playing it. I asked myself who was I reaching... I just fell out of love with it.
Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.
I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.
So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own.
I played clarinet for many years.
I used to play flute and clarinet at school, and although I wasn't thinking about making a living or getting a pay cheque, I already knew I was going to play music all my life.
I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano.
I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets.
The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves.
If I live near a dancer or a painter, or a clarinet player comes from my neighborhood, I take some pleasure in that, feel a little more as if I come from someplace in particular.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.
I've played the clarinet since I was a kid. I love to sing, but I'm not much of a singer. Let's say that when it comes to vocalizing, I have the soul of Billy Bigelow but the voice of Jigger Cragan.
The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.
We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.
