Jason Alder | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | Livonia, Michigan, U.S. |
| Genres | Contemporary classical, jazz, world, electroacoustic, experimental, free improvisation |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instrument(s) | Clarinet, saxophone |
| Website | www |
Jason Alder is an American-born clarinetist, bass clarinetist, and saxophonist. [1] He is best known for his work in contemporary music, free improvisation, and electro-acoustic music.
Alder grew up in Westland, a suburb of Detroit, and performed with the Michigan Youth Band at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor while in high school. [2] He holds a degree in music from Michigan State University, where he studied clarinet with Frank Ell. [3] In 2006 he moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands, to study bass clarinet at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Erik van Deuren, where he obtained a second degree. He received an MMus from the Artez Conservatorium in Arnhem, Netherlands, studying free improvisation in the New Dutch Swing program with saxophonist and bass clarinetist Frank Gratkowski and double bassist Wilbert de Joode. In 2017 he began a PhD program at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK researching the contrabass clarinet. His other teachers have included Richard Hawkins, Kimberly Cole, Yaniv Nachum, Michael Lowenstern, David Krakauer, Ernesto Molinari, and Claudio Puntin. [4]
Alder specializes in contemporary classical music and working with electronics. In 2010 he created a Max/MSP patch to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Solo für melodieinstrument und Rückkopplung" using only a computer in place of the 6 reel-to-reel tape machines and 4 assistants originally required to perform the piece. [5] Alder has also worked with composers to develop electronics for their compositions. In 2013 he collaborated with Robert Ratcliffe on his piece "Wake up Call", originally for bass clarinet and fixed-medium electronic accompaniment. Alder created a Max/MSP patch which allowed for adding effects to the bass clarinet, as well as rearranging the sections of the piece, as is specified by Ratcliffe in the score. [6] He has worked with and/or premiered pieces from a number of composers, including Christian Wolff, Stefan Prins, Gabriel Prokofiev, André Douw, Francisco Castillo Trigueros, Andys Skordis, Thanos Chrysakis, Rodrigo Tascón, Yu Oda, and Thanasis Deligiannis. He also performs with flutist Katalin Szanyi in the Shadanga Duo, which worked with composer Louis Aguirre and other members of the Danish composers group Snow Mask to commission and premiere new works. [7] In 2018, he became the first person to play the contrabass clarinet in Cuba with a solo performance at the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music.
In addition to composed music, Alder is an improviser and has performed solo, in Sonido 13- an electroacoustic duo with saxophonist Harry Cherrin, and with other improvisers such as Tom Jackson and Alex Ward. [8] In duo with Austrian vocalist Magdalena Hahnkamper as megalodon/na, he won the Lyrik Live prize from the Austrian radio station Ö1 for a free improvisation theater/performance art/video piece. [9]
Alder also performs in jazz and world music bands such as the klezmer-jazz band Payazen!, gypsy punk band Victor Menace, afrobeat bands JORO and Matuki, with Bangladeshi/British singer Shapla Salique, and with the Balkan-jazz band Mimika. He has also studied karnatic music. In 2014 Alder toured with Idina Menzel and Rob Mounsey, and has played in other pop and rock bands such as The Lazlo Device, The Palumbo Phunk, Novack, Canvas Blanco, and RaskalBOMFukkerz. He played bass guitar in the bands Spinfist and June Ruin.
Alder has performed at festivals around the world, such as ClarinetFest, [10] [11] [12] European Clarinet Festival, Istanbul Woodwind Festival, [13] American Single Reed Summit, [14] Gaudeamus Contemporary Music Festival, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Havana Festival of Contemporary Music, International Festival for Artistic Innovation, [15] and the Ferrara Buskers Festival. [16]
Alder has authored extended range quarter-tone fingering charts for both clarinet and bass clarinet. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
In 2015 he became the editor of The Clarinet [Online] for the International Clarinet Association. [1] [23]
Soundtracks
The clarinet is a single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell.
A jazz band is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a horn section.
The sarrusophones are a family of metal double reed conical bore woodwind instruments patented and first manufactured by French instrument maker Pierre-Louis Gautrot in 1856. Gautrot named the sarrusophone after French bandmaster Pierre-Auguste Sarrus (1813–1876), whom he credited with the concept of the instrument, though it is not clear whether Sarrus benefited financially. The instruments were intended for military bands, to serve as replacements for oboes and bassoons which at the time lacked the carrying power required for outdoor marching music. Although originally designed as double-reed instruments, single-reed mouthpieces were later developed for use with the larger bass and contrabass sarrusophones.
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B♭ clarinet, it is usually pitched in B♭, but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B♭ clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare. Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular.
The contrabass clarinet (also pedal clarinet, after the pedals of pipe organs) and contra-alto clarinet are the two largest members of the clarinet family that are in common usage. Modern contrabass clarinets are transposing instruments pitched in B♭, sounding two octaves lower than the common B♭ soprano clarinet and one octave below the bass clarinet. Some contrabass clarinet models have extra keys to extend the range down to low written E♭3, D3 or C3. This gives a tessitura written range, notated in treble clef, of C3 – F6, which sounds B♭0 – E♭4. Some early instruments were pitched in C; Arnold Schoenberg's Fünf Orchesterstücke specifies a contrabass clarinet in A, but there is no evidence such an instrument has ever existed.
Ken Vandermark is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.
The contra-alto clarinet, E♭ contrabass clarinet, is a large clarinet pitched a perfect fifth below the B♭ bass clarinet. It is a transposing instrument in E♭ sounding an octave and a major sixth below its written pitch, between the bass clarinet and the B♭ contrabass clarinet.
Timothy "Tim" George Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds, lap steel guitar, and keyboards. He first became known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968. After the demise of Henry Cow, he participated in numerous bands and projects, eventually concentrating on composing contemporary music and performing as an improviser.
Black Ox Orkestar is a quartet that formed in Montreal, Quebec in 2000 who play modern Jewish diasporic music that draws influence from Klezmer, Romani, Arabic, Balkan and other East European traditions alongside indie rock, experimental folk and avant-jazz. The band interprets traditional tunes and composes originals sung primarily in Yiddish.
Brave Old World is an American and German klezmer band. It formed in 1989. Members hail from the US and Germany. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup. Every player is a virtuoso.” In 1992, the group won first prize at the International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel. Clarinetist Joel Rubin was a founding member.
The Klezmorim, founded in Berkeley, California, in 1975, was the world's first klezmer revival band, widely credited with spearheading the global renaissance of klezmer in the 1970s and 1980s. Initially featuring flute and strings—notably the exotic fiddling of co-founder David Skuse—the ensemble reorganized into a "loose, roaring, funky" brass/reed/percussion band fronted by co-founder Lev Liberman's saxophones and founding member David Julian Gray's clarinets. As a professional performing and recording ensemble focused on recreating the lost sounds of early 20th century klezmer bands, The Klezmorim achieved crossover success, garnering a Grammy nomination in 1982 for their album Metropolis and selling out major concert venues across North America and Europe, including Carnegie Hall and L'Olympia in Paris. The band performed steadily until 1993, regrouping in 2004 for a European tour.
David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation.
Theodor Franz Jörgensmann is a German jazz clarinetist.
The clarinet family is a woodwind instrument family of various sizes and types of clarinets, including the common soprano clarinet in B♭ and A, bass clarinet, and sopranino E♭ clarinet.
Andrew Edward Statman is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist.
Ernst Ulrich Deuker is a bass player and contrabass clarinet player. He became known with the band Ideal.
Henri Bok is a Dutch bass clarinetist known for his unique compositions.
The woodwind section, which consists of woodwind instruments, is one of the main sections of an orchestra or concert band. Woodwind sections contain instruments given Hornbostel-Sachs classifications of 421 and 422, but exclude 423
Matt Bauder is an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. He is the bandleader of the jazz trio Hearing Things, the jazz quintet Day in Pictures, and the modern doo-wop group White Blue Yellow & Clouds. He is a member of the long-form improvisation trio Memorize the Sky, jazz collective Ghost Train Orchestra, and was formerly a member of the touring lineups for Arcade Fire and Iron & Wine.
Small Ensemble Music (Wesleyan) 1994 is a live album by composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton with a rotating group of musicians forming trios, a duo and sextet, recorded at Wesleyan University in 1994 and released on the Italian Splasc(H) label.
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