From 11-13 December 2014 the 4th European Clarinet Congress was held in Katowice, Poland. While I’ve been involved with the past International clarinet festivals, this was my first European. I was invited to perform a solo concert, where I premiered a solo clarinet piece Fáessa by Thanos Chrysakis, and also played a couple of my bass clarinet favorites, Monólogo Fantástico by Francisco Castillo Trigueros and Wake Up Call by Robert Ratcliffe.

In addition to my solo concert, I was invited to perform with the European Clarinet Association ensembles, with whom I’d also performed at other ClarinetFests. In Poland I had the pleasure of performing in a bass clarinet ensemble with Matthias Müller and his SABRe electronic bass clarinet and the amazing David Krakauer! We also did an expanded 6 person version of the Paul Termos Buste bass clarinet duo with Fie Schouten, Jadwiga Czarkowska, Stephan Vermeersch, Kyrill Rybakov, and Alex Simu; and some larger clarinet ensemble pieces lead by Matthias Müller, culminating in his European Anthemity, incorporating the national anthems of all the European countries played by an ensemble of 25.

Overall, it was a really great festival. I was a bit worried at first, because communication seemed to be slow and lacking from the organization, but it came together really wonderfully. In contrast to the ICA ClarinetFests where there’s often 5 simultaneous concerts, here there was just one at a time, so everyone theoretically had the chance to hear everything. Of course that wasn’t entirely the case for those of us having to run around to rehearsals throughout, but that’s the cost of performing. I was also impressed with the programming. There was a great mix of repertoire, lots of new, yet accessible, music. I heard some pieces that have worked their way into the standard rep of new music, and also some brand new things. There was also some classic rep, but often with a refreshing new twist. In addition to classical, there was also a jazz evening with Alex Simu soloing with a Big Band before he closed the evening with his band Arifa. There was also quite a bit of klezmer, of course with David Krakauer, but also from some of the clarinet quartets I heard. Dance of Fire stood out, as well as the comic antics of the Nevsky Quartet. Le Bon Becs also played, but I was only able to catch some of it from the broadcast in the foyer.

The host building, the music academy in Katowice, is beautifully restored and recently expanded with a great sounding concert hall and a good canteen, so it wasn’t even problematic when there was no time to leave for food or beers. Staying on site was fine. The vendor exhibitions were held in an adjacent building and rather than having a huge room with everyone, each vendor got their own room. This was great for the ability to actually hear yourself while trying things out. But on the other hand, there was less overall visibility for each vendor and some people may have felt a bit intimidated to just enter a room and look around, as if there would be pressure to have to buy something. I know some of the vendors were disappointed in the lack of visitors they had.

 

And here’s a video of the SABRe ensemble with David Krakauer starting at 2.29. The first half is Matthias Müller and Krakauer playing a duo improv.

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The last night of the congress was the jazz night, and afterwards there was a jam session in a nearby student club. The students played quite well, but it was when Krakauer showed up with his horn that it really got going. He just tore it up for a while, and some other jumped in as well like Müller, and several others that had been playing at the congress. And even when the band had had enough and stopped, some of them took to the dancefloor to keep wailing a while. It ended up being a lot of fun, with the night ending late with vodka shots with members of the board and reps from some of the big instrument and reed manufacturers (names withheld to protect the innocent 😉 )

 

 

It turns out in the morning a bunch of us had the same 10.00 flight out of Katowice to Frankfurt where we got our connections. It was a bit bleary with only a couple hours of sleep, but we all managed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many clarinets and bass clarinets packed into the overheads on one flight before!

What a great festival! My favorite yet.