The Waterloo Concert Band received a grant this year from the Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation, part of which will be used to purchase an E-flat clarinet. I volunteered to research E-flat clarinets to help us figure out what the band is going to purchase. I've never played an E-flat clarinet before, but I never let little things like "inexperience" stop me.

Unrelated to clarinets, I received my 10 year service award from Harris Corporation, which was a little silver tie-clip from Tiffany & Co. (I actually started as a summer student way back in 1998!) The gift was very nice, but I don't wear ties that often, and when I do, I don't wear tie clips. So Angela and I decided to go to visit Tiffany's in Toronto and exchange it for something else. We picked up a very nice Frank Gehry pendant for Angela. Thanks, Harris!

While we were in Toronto, we decided to visit some of the bigger music stores to see if there were any E-flat clarinets in stock. St. John's Music doesn't stock them because they are such a rare item, but Long & McQuade had two Buffet Crampon R13's in stock, so we lucked out! They let me put one together and play it with a Vandoren mouthpiece that they had in stock. It was very smooth and easy to play, and the tone quality was amazing. I had a bit of trouble with the altissimo register, but I think that was my lack of experience with clarinet, some bad embouchure habits I've developed over the years, and a soft reed that was straight out of the box. Nevertheless, playing a brand new $4000 instrument was pretty amazing.

I'm looking forward to the rest of my search for the perfect E-flat clarinet. Hopefully when the band does purchase one, I will get to play it in concert sometime!

Technical details: This photo was taken with my Rebel XT + kit lens at 18mm, ISO 1600, f/5.6 for 1/50th of a second.

Comments

Good idea about the pendant.  This way, you can enjoy your milestone looking at
the awesome pendant when Angela wears it.
Congratulations! 
I enjoyed following
all the links.	It's a very informative POTW.  I'll see if Kerry or Graham have
any information to offer on E-flat clarinets to add to your research.