RICHARD STOLTZMAN a Mouthpiece the Clarinet

Stoltzman says his only mission is to emphasize the vitality of music in our lives.
By DEBORA SHAULIS
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Richard Stoltzman will whet your appetite, one way or another.
"Usually people like my Linzer torte," says the Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef and Grammy-winning clarinetist. "I do make that quite often. The Linzer torte -- there's something special about that."
Depending on one's level of hunger, it's either rapturous or torturous to listen to Stoltzman describe his specialty. He starts with the basic recipe but adds "a dollop of cocoa," he said. There's also a raspberry layer that he laces with Chambourd, a liqueur.
It's music, not dessert, that brings Stoltzman to Youngstown this week. There's something special about that, too.
Visit: Stoltzman will be the featured artist at Youngstown Symphony Orchestra's season-ending concert Saturday night.
About 10,000 school children and their chaperones will also sample Stoltzman's music when he performs in a tribute to Benny Goodman at the symphony's Young People's Concerts this Thursday and Friday.
"Richard Stoltzman always makes his performances special. He brings a lot of bravado and swagger and humor and beauty to any performance," said Robert Fitzer, coordinator of clarinet studies at Youngstown State University Dana School of Music. Stoltzman will participate in a master class there Friday.
This demanding schedule is typical of Stoltzman's travels. "I think it's appropriate to be part of the life of the place that you're visiting," he said.
Just like his interest in pastry preparation, Stoltzman's enthusiasm for music is a natural extension of his personality rather than a marketing tool.
"My only mission is to make sure people realize how vital music is for their lives, and for my life ... vital in the sense that it's essential to our humanity and our spirituality," Stoltzman said.
Project: Stoltzman was contacted in Seattle, where he's participating in a recording project with good friend William Thomas McKinley, founder of the Master Musicians Collective. The purpose is to record and archive works by contemporary American composers.
"I've learned a number of new clarinet concerti," Stoltzman said, putting the number at 40. "It's a great project. ... It's amazing how many wonderful composers there are in America, but they aren't famous. They don't even know each other."
Lack of exposure is something today's composers have in common with their predecessors -- even the highly-regarded Europeans. Stoltzman, who is not a composer, has read that the first thing Brahms did when he completed an orchestral piece was to write a four-hand piano score for it. That way, the music could be played everywhere, whether or not a symphony existed.
Copland piece: Stoltzman will perform Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto with the YSO. Copland wrote it in 1948 for Goodman, the big band legend. "Fact is, Benny didn't play it that much," Stoltzman said. "If Benny didn't play it, nobody was going to play it." The piano part, alone, is "almost unplayable," he said; it requires three hands. (Stoltzman's wife, Lucy, wrote an arrangement for piano and violin that's beautiful, he added.)
Modern American composers should be inspired by Copland's career. The Brooklyn-born Copland was, according to Stoltzman, "a real American kind of guy" who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (as did YSO music director Isaiah Jackson).
The American and European influences are evident in Copland's concerto, Stoltzman said. It begins with a dreamy, western European-style waltz that fades away and is replaced by a 1940s swing-era sound that's full of syncopation, double time and extreme ranges.
"It's just really cool to be an American clarinet player and play a real American piece of music," Stoltzman said.
Copland bridged a gap between musical worlds. The clarinet's versatility does the same. So it makes sense that Stoltzman moves easily from classical to jazz to pop music.
Personal history: Genre boundaries weren't so distinct when Stoltzman was growing up. His father loved big bands and took him to many outdoor concerts. Both of his parents sang at church. His early music teachers allowed him to experiment with music styles. At his first recital, he paired a classical song with two choruses of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," he said.
Stoltzman's education was primarily in public schools. Born in Omaha, Neb., he played in the marching band at Woodward High School in Cincinnati and went to college at Ohio State University, where he studied music but took extra courses in math.
"I didn't know there was such a thing as classical music until I went to Ohio State," he said.
Since then, he has earned a master of music degree at Yale University, where he studied oboe, flute and bassoon. He was the first clarinetist to give recitals in Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. He was the first woodwind player to receive the Avery Fisher Prize -- an award he has in common with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. One of his two Grammys is also shared with Yo-Yo Ma, for trios by Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart that they recorded with Emanuel Ax.
He's performed with most major orchestras as well as jazz and pop musicians such as Mel Torme, George Shearing, Judy Collins and The Canadian Brass. He appears on 50 recordings that encompass classical, jazz, opera, rock and Latin dance music. He's even appeared on the children's TV shows "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."
What really sets Stoltzman apart is how he has popularized the clarinet, Fitzer said. "Before Stoltzman, there were no real orchestral soloists on clarinet that were popular. ... He's taken it out of the ensemble context and turned it into a soloist instrument that isn't necessarily jazz."
From orchestral concerts to Linzer tortes, Stoltzman manages to personalize it all.
shaulis@vindy.com