French Program with Clarinet Soloist Highlights LSO

If you’ve been frustrated by not hearing a Lansing Symphony concert in the past couple of months, you can thank “Aladdin” for taking up residency at Wharton Center for four weeks.

In any case, they’ll be back on Saturday, January 18^th for a fascinating program of French music.

To a large degree, that program was put together to take advantage of Guy Yehuda, the brilliant principal clarinetist with the LSO playing the virtuosic clarinet concerto by French composer Jean Francaix. It’s always a joy to hear talented soloists from within the ranks of the orchestra.

Yehuda, who is also professor of clarinet at Michigan State University, sustains a robust international career with a professional artist manager in Texas.  He said, “I consider myself a performer who teaches.  I travel a lot and perform about 65 concerts per year – most during the summer.”

The clarinetist tried to tackle this concerto when he was in high school in his native Israel but he didn’t quite do it. “This is one of the hardest concertos for clarinet”, he says. "France has a tradition of having lots of great music for winds.  I like to call the Francaix, ‘Poulenc on steroids’. It’s extremely virtuosic.”

Yehuda, 44, likes to call himself the black sheep of his family, since none of them played music. “In Israel, the system for learning wind instruments is totally different than in the US.  It’s all extracurricular, done after school.  The municipalities have bands with just drums and bugles. 

“The kids march around with drums to get the rhythm and then play the bugles, without learning any written notes – it's all aural. They learn music and march around and then they are asked what instrument they’d like to play.  My father had just heard a Klezmer clarinet on a record and said I should play the clarinet. I agreed”

Yehuda loved growing up in Haifa, his hometown.  “It was a very robust arts scene and culturally it was a big mix – a big Arab population, a large German colony and even lots of Christmas decorations.”

From the very beginning, it was true love between Yehuda and the clarinet. 

“My first teacher was a jazz clarinetist so I listened, hours on end, to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.  But when I got into the arts high school, classical took over.”

His upward spiral to music success was uninterrupted.  The arts high school served as a transition to professional life.  He soon played with the Young Israel Philharmonic and the Haifa Philharmonic.

After high school, it was compulsory for him to sign up for the Army.  “I had basic training and served guard duty with my Uzi, but I was accepted into the Exceptional Musicians program which was started by Isaac Stern. I played in a chamber orchestra and we traveled to remote locations to play for soldiers.  In Israel, the Army is part of the fabric of society.  It’s very important and is the great equalizer.  It was an eye-opening experience for me”.

Toward the end of his stint in the service, Toronto clarinet professor Abe Galper, came to Israel and he found Yehuda.  After listening to him play, Galper convinced him to come to Canada to study with him.

“I knew that I would study outside (of Israel).  It wasn’t a shock to go to Toronto.  I loved the city.”

While in Toronto he studied composition and conducting in addition to the clarinet and continued his interest in chamber music. For a time, he wanted to change his concentration and become a conductor. That ended when he was accepted to Indiana University where he received his doctorate.

Since coming to MSU, he has built a very strong clarinet studio and increased his concert schedule.  And this year he has begun the Capital Chamber Music Society.  Yehuda says, “I had this wish to start something for several years, so when I moved here, I saw a niche for salon concerts that would fit very well.  The aim is to have concerts in private houses.

“After all, the music was conceived for living rooms.  This is the first year for the chamber series and things are going very well.  We only allow an audience of 30 and people tell me that they’ve never heard music so close and personal. We have three concerts for the first year." 

To complement the Francaix concerto, Timothy Muffitt has programmed the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas, the Ravel “Mother Goose Suite” and the program will end with “An American in Paris” by Gershwin.

If you miss the LSO concert, Yehuda will also be playing the Mozart clarinet concerto with the MSU orchestra on February 7. 

For tickets and information go to www.lansingsymphony.org.