CSU Summer Arts 2016
By Joshua Phillips

Greetings! My name is Joshua Phillips and I am a senior, Bachelor of Music Performance major at California State University Fullerton. My study of profession is classical clarinet. In July 2016, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the International Clarinet Association’s annual ClarinetFest. This annual festival takes place all over the world, and this year’s festival was held at The University of Kansas. I have attended ClarinetFest in the past, Northridge-2011 and Assisi, Italy-2013, yet this time was extra special. This was the first time that myself, and three other members from the clarinet studio at CSUF were invited to perform at the festival. This performance came from a newly formed collaboration of the Orange County Clarinet Consort (OCCC) and the CSUF Clarinet Consort.

The OCCC is a professional consort consisting of clarinetists who live and regularly perform in Orange County. Their mission statement is to highlight the beautiful sounds of a clarinet choir by commissioning new works for this instrumentation and ensemble, as well as collaborating with outside groups, such as the CSUF Clarinet Consort, to provide aspiring and focused clarinet students the experience to perform alongside local professionals. I am pleased to say, as the President of the CSUF Clarinet Consort, that this collaboration is the first of its kind for both the CSUF Consort and the OCCC.

Both groups began rehearsing together at the end of May. The rehearsals were once a week for three hours. The preparation involved for this particular program was one of the most intense, according to members of the OCCC. The first piece on the program was Devil Sticks by Scott McCallister. The piece, subtitled Equilibristics, holds true in sound representation to the title of the piece. A brief minimalistic intro is followed by sudden scaling passages, large intervallic leaps, and dynamic extremes. After an ethereal, and slow contemplative middle section, the piece fires up again similar to the beginning and concludes abruptly with an exciting and energetic crescendo figure. The work gave the audience a very clear soundscape of the circus act known as equilibristics, or Devil Sticks.

Following Devil Sticks was a piece commissioned for OCCC by Clifford Tasner, a prominent Hollywood based Film Score composer. The finished product, which was to provide listeners with a particular and distinct trait of Orange County, was inspired by the spooky Californian Santa Ana winds, which later became the name of the work, Santa Ana’s. This new work featured extended clarinet techniques, such as flutter tonguing, barrel crying, and even coughing. Throughout the course of the rehearsals, the ensemble was able to work with the composer one-on-one and rectify a great musical interpretation of Mother Nature’s excitement.

Finally, the ensemble finished with a trend setting transcription, done by Jessica Wilkins, of the third movement of Frank Ticheli’s Clarinet Concerto for Wind Band. However, the transcription did not involve a wind band, therefore the instrumentation became solo clarinet, clarinet choir, and one percussion part. The soloist for whom the original piece was commissioned for is international clarinet virtuoso Håkan Rosengren. The OCCC and the CSUF Clarinet Consort had the incredible pleasure of collaborating with Rosengren, who agreed to perform the solo part with the group. Not only was it impressive that we were able to transcribe the concerto, which was granted approval by Ticheli, but we also performed it with Rosengren and the 12-member consort, without a conductor. The pressing descending scale of the piece concluded our concert at the festival, which brought the audience ecstatically to their feet.

 My time at the festival was very inspiring, educational, and memorable. Not every clarinetist gets to say they performed at the annual ClarinetFest, and I am honored to have represented CSUF and our incredible Clarinet, Music, and Arts programs. Clarinetists and musicians from all over the world attend this festival and are now aware and impressed of the high caliber of clarinet focus and music that is present in Orange County and California State University, Fullerton.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy the pictures and recordings.

To review of our performance, please click on the link: http://clarinet.org/index.php/2016/08/11/clarinetfest-2016-day-5-orange-county-clarinet-consort/