Clarinets (A - Z)

You'll maybe notice at the top of the blog a 'new' bar mentioning Home and Clarinets A-Z. This is the beginning of a list or page of links (in this blog an elsewhere) to clarinet players of interest in the jazz world. I decided after noticing a few remarks on other blogs mentioning the likes of John Carter and various other players, the lack of information on this wonderful instrument ..... especially in jazz! If I had to continue on I'd start to add players such as Richard Stolzman, Thea King, Ivo Papasov, Selim Sesler, Hüsnü Sendendirlici and the list goes ........ on. But, to be realistic I'll stick (for the moment) with those players found in the jazz world. This list is NOT complete, I will try to add to it over time with new people that I've heard playing and short comments on their music and recordings.

I had a MySpace page, which is now deleted, called The Blackstick where I tried to promote the clarinet by bringing together as many players of this instrument as possible. However, due to copyright laws I got fed up with endless emails and blocked accounts by MySpace and so ended taking the page down. To me it seemed kind of sad that an instrument that is often 'in the shadows' when talking about the jazz world, still doesn't have a larger following, especially in this day and age. However; one should be thankful that players such as Don Byron and Chris Speed have popped up and so given the clarinet some sort of credibility. I mention these two players as they really seem to have given the clarinet some sort of new life 'publicly', for young players, influencing them to take up (or continue) playing jazz, nu-jazz, rock-jazz and improvised music etc using this very difficult instrument.

I'm sure I've missed out many players from this list and I'll be more than interested to here/read any suggestions for players to be listened to (we have a fantastic audio library here in Belgium). I have just made this list from memory and what I have in my CD/LP collection. Some of the players are just doubling (which doesn't make them lesser players), so can be found playing the clarinet on a track or two  of a CD, others are featuring the instrument most of the time.

Try typing jazz clarinet into the YouTube search engine and see what comes up!