I made an order I'd meant to make for a long time with Gary Van Cott. His business accepting credit card orders made it easy, and the service was personal and as swift as the US Postal Service in a snowstorm would allow it to be. Since Gary has a great collection of Clarinet books and CDs that are hard (if not impossible) to find elsewhere, I highly recommend him.

Peter Hadcock book "The Working Clarinetist" was a real gem. It arrived today, and I took the book on the bus to a runout concert. That gave me three hours to peruse the material, and all I can say is "Run, do not walk, to the nearest place that sells this book!" Since you're reading this at your computer, see the paragraph above!! The bulk of the book is excerpts, carefully put together, with all the important passages and commentary about how to play them - good, solid, practical advice, born of 25 years in the Boston Symphony. Included are Kodaly "Galanta Dances", Bartok "Miraculous Mandarin", Beethoven and Brahms "audition" symphonies - all the standard stuff. A few Eb excerpts that escaped the Eb excerpt book are included here - Copland "El Salon Mexico" and Bernstein "On the Town". I do wish he'd included second parts for some excerpts - Mendelssohn "Scherzo" and "Italian" Symphony - "Petrouchka" - "Mandarin" to name a few.

There are also areas about embouchure, articulation, reeds and reed making, mouthpieces - lots of practical information for the aspiring clarinetist, the professional clarinetist, and the clarinet teacher. All of this is put together in a readable way, with a laminated heavy cover and a metal ring binding, published by Roncorp. 

If I get to have one quibble, it's about the layout - I found myself doing a lot of page flipping because the explanations were often not on the same or facing pages as the musical examples. But given the value of the material in this book, that's a very small complaint. This is a "must have" for anyone who plays the clarinet.

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

I've been ridiculously busy with end-of-semester stuff (that tiny little 20 page "Musical History and Evolution of Clarinet Literature Paper" is consuming quite some time), that I forgot to thank someone.

Gary Van Cott supplied me with a necessary text in the nick of time by priority mailing it to me.  He was efficient, and of course, friendly (I've never seen Gary otherwise, though...)

Mr. VC - my hat is off to you; you have my many thanks.  All you other students out there who ever need a clarinet text of sorts, go to him first - he's got it, and even better, he's got it at better than Amazon prices and you know you're dealing with another clarinet player. 

Thanks again, Gary!

J. Shouryu Nohe
New Mexico State Univ.