Word: clarinets
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...strength, always making hits," but not growing as a performer, one begins to understand what led him to produce a straight movie like The Front and then move on to the Bergmanesque Interiors. And the shots of Allen at home talking casually to the unseen documentarian and playing his clarinet put to rout forever the myth that Allen is still the totally nervous, completely incompetent schlep; inept in daily life and in his relationships. Fact is, Allen is as well-adjusted, self-actualized as he will ever be, and, after years of struggle--through analysis and through self-expression...
Stoltzman, in fact, came to the classical clarinet by the unorthodox route of jazz. During his childhood in San Francisco, he and his father, a railroad man with a passion for the tenor sax, would im- provise hymns at Presbyterian Sunday school. "We'd play the main-line melody and then just float in and out of harmonies," he recalls. "That freedom not to play all the notes exactly as they were written was the beginning to me of making music...
...semi-commune of string students. "Not only did I come to feel that music was essential to life," says Stoltzman, "but I was surrounded by people who tried to play like a voice singing, something neglected by clarinetists." He credits those two years with his interest in expanding the clarinet's color, after which his technique was inspired by Kalman Opperman, a New York teacher of the strict "old school...
Stoltzman now lives in Manhattan with his wife, Lucy, 26, and his year-old son, Peter John. Lucy, a violinist, occasionally supplements the family income by playing with Broadway shows. Stoltzman spends his free time transcribing music from other instruments for the clarinet to help fill out its meager repertory. One of the Mostly Mozart performances will include Mozart's Concerto in B-Flat, composed for the bassoon...
...career takes off, Stoltzman is increasingly on the road, appearing with regional symphonies or with the TASHI Quartet, which he helped to organize. His ambition now is to do for the clarinet what Casals did for the cello: transform his instrument into an eloquent solo performer. "Last spring, when I was playing in Vancouver with the Amadeus Quartet," says Stoltzman, "a 90-year-old man came backstage and said, 'That's the first time the clarinet ever sounded human to me.' That's what I want-to make music that will liberate people." - Annalyn Swan