Tips for the Aging Woodwind Player

My Background

I started having serious interest in playing the clarinet 51 years ago at age 43. When I was 12, I was given a metal clarinet and a series of lessons at Gimble Bros. dep’t store. I chose the clarinet because I loved Artie Shaw’s playing. However, after the lessons were over I didn’t play for the next 30 years. In the interim I started Temple University as a premed, and then was drafted into the US Navy.

I served as an electronic technician on the USS Adams DM27 sweeping mines around Japan during and after WW ll. The only combat I saw was on a shore patrol duty in Shanghai when we had a rather rough physical encounter before subduing three drunken US sailors

On returning to the US, I continued at Temple University and then Hahnemann Medical College with help from the G.I. bill of rights, and worked intermittently at various jobs including a Breyer’s ice cream factory, a dairy facility, and also drove a taxi two summers on the night shift.

I trained in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Philadelphia General Hospital and subsequently practiced at Abington Hospital for 44 years before becoming chief of cardiology at Abington Hospital and Adjunct Associate Professor of medicine at Temple University. With various co-authors I had 13 research papers published mostly in peer reviewed journals and was once voted physician of the year. One of my sons heads the Carolina Medical Center Heart Transplant Center. Over the years I’ve blessed with 5 wonderful children, 14 grandchildren, 2 stepdaughters with 3 more grandchildren.

My Return to the Clarinet

I resumed the clarinet at age 43 after being grounded from tennis for a while due to a back injury, and felt the need for something to do. So I began clarinet lessons at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia.

My wife, who is also a clarinetist, was a Bennington graduate and noticed that there was a summer music camp at the college. I decided to go there. That resulted in the awareness that I knew very little about chamber music and had serious problems with novel meters and difficult rhythms. By their present standards I would never have been accepted.

The coaching at Bennington has always been excellent and participants are expected to be well prepared and prepare for assigned pieces including studying the score. As it turned out. I went for there for 36 years mostly for two weeks at a time. I’ll always treasure the musical growth and camradery of this experience.

Having been duly chastened by awareness of my musical deficiencies I got serious and started lessons with Donald Montanaro of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The first lesson was entirely limited to blowing an open G. These sessions went on intermittently for about 30 years. Coincidentally, I’m told Donald also was instrumental in designing the M series of clarinet mouthpieces for Vandoren, a major world-wide producer of clarinet mouthpieces and reeds.

Donald was an excellent coach and has many students who are in major orchestras. We had a sort of symbiotic relationship as he could have rationed his time for younger and more talented students. With his help, I eventually gave a credible performance of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with a local symphony orchestra.