In 2011, my clarinet concerto was performed and recorded by David Drosinos and the St. Petersburg Symphony. For me, it was a big deal. It was the first of my orchestral works to be recorded and the only one performed by a major European orchestra.

Here's how it happened ....

In 1991, I made my first trip to Paris, where I befriended French clarinetist Lucien Aubert. He asked me to write several pieces for him -- a quintet for clarinet and strings, two reed trios and a piece called Voyage of the Spirit which turned out to be the first of no less than thirteen clarinet, cello and piano trios I was to write for Lucien over the next decade and a half.

I had already written for clarinet and liked the instrument very much but when Lucien requested these pieces, I concentrated on the instrument. To date, I've written 51 works featuring the clarinet. For me, it has come to be an autobiographical instrument. For better or worse, I see my character and personality reflected in the clarinet; it can be foolish or wise, sarcastic or noble, trite or impassioned, funny or dead earnest. Same goes for your friend, the undersigned.

Finding ways to couple the clarinet and the cello, with the piano as a backdrop, proved so compelling that I almost could not stop writing works for that combination of instruments. There was so much to explore, so many possibilities. That's why I've written more for that combination of instruments than for any other.

Stylistically, the thirteen trios zig-zag wildly as they progress; each is in some way the opposite of its predecessor. Taken altogether, they form a trajectory, aiming all along at my epic-length clarinet concerto, though I did not realize it at the time I was writing these trios.

In 2000, when I was about half-way through the writing of my thirteen trios, my Italian-American clarinetist friend Angelo Santoro asked me to write a one-movement work for clarinet and orchestra which he could premiere with the Cincinnati Community Orchestra. I complied with The View from Carew, a Romance for clarinet and orchestra.

Angelo premiered it, playing beautifully as he always does, a noble presence with his silver mustache and black tuxedo. Afterwards he informed me that the Romance was destined to be the slow, middle movement of a full-length three-movement concerto and that now I must write the other two movements! He kept after me, phoning me every couple months to ask how the concerto was coming along. Finally, in the summer of 2007 I accepted the challenge of writing the substantial outer movements that an expansive middle movement would require.

I wanted the concerto to be like a large mural in a public place. I wanted it to express suitably large ideas. I wanted to affirm my conviction that tonality, tunefulness and traditional musical architecture are as powerfully expressive as ever in our 21st century. I wanted the concerto to convey optimism, friendship, love of Nature; I wanted it to brim with joy. I wanted it to sound American, to evoke our country's spaciousness and potential, mixing elements of folk music and jazz and extending the film score devices of the great Hollywood westerns.

I wanted the solo clarinet's relationship with the orchestra to be that of a friend and a teacher -- not an adversary. I wanted the clarinet to present gifts to the orchestra -- exuberant, celebratory tunes that the orchestra could joyfully “learn” and play in turn. Most of all, I wanted you, the listeners, to experience the piece as a gift, a most welcome gift.

I became so excited writing this piece that there were times when sleep evaded me. I could not turn off the music that came pouring into my head. Some days I worked for nine hours straight, resenting the pauses I had to make in order to eat or visit the bathroom!

By winter, the concerto was complete and, thanks to a grant Angelo got from the Cincinnati Foundation, he premiered it the following April with the Clermont Philharmonic, the community orchestra he founded many years ago.

I wanted clarinetists to know about this piece. Googling assiduously, I found the names and email addresses of a couple hundred clarinet professors. I sent each a cheery email, introducing myself and the concerto, attaching an mp3 of Angelo's performance and a PDF of the score.

A half dozen responded. A month later, one of those, David Drosinos of Baltimore, MD, was asked by the conductor of the St. Petersburg Symphony if he would like to record a CD with that orchestra and if he knew of any new American clarinet concerto that had not yet been recorded. "Do I ever!" he replied and they recorded mine.

Do you imagine that these things just happen? No. Recording is how post-Soviet orchestras survive without the government support they once enjoyed. David, bless his heart, funded the entire project out of his retirement savings. The expense was enormous. You would be shocked to know the amount. When I thanked him, he said, "Well, what else could I do to advance my career? rent Carnegie Hall and do a recital? What would that mean to anybody, really? This way, I got to do the premiere recording with a major orchestra of a concerto I really like. And, from now on, whenever your concerto is broadcast on American classical radio stations, my name will be mentioned as the soloist."

True enough. Thank you, David, with all my heart. And Angelo, my good friend.

Some time I'll send you the other two movements.

For now, please listen to David Drosinos and the St. Petersburg Symphony play the third movement from my Clarinet Concerto. Click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the orchestral score, click on the link to that, also above.

The clarinet-piano reduction of the score is easier to follow. To see a PDF of that version, click on that link.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 13, 2014

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“You want the Cincinnati Symphony to play your clarinet concerto? Well, you chucklehead, there’s the conductor, in person, the Maestro himself, sitting right over there, not fifteen feet behind you.”

I twisted my chucklehead around to look across the crowded restaurant and, sure enough, there he was, breakfasting and holding forth before a half dozen adoring associates. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but he was clearly telling a story. He was making wide gestures, pointing both forefingers toward the ceiling as he spoke, waving them around as if directing a hovering host of angels, invisible to the rest of us.

“All you have to do,” urged my friend, "is stand up, go over to his table and introduce yourself! Tell him you want the orchestra to play your concerto! Tell him your buddy bet you a hundred bucks that you wouldn't have the nerve to do it. What have you got to lose?”

I poked moodily at my scrambled egg burrito. “That’s not how it’s done,” I murmured.

“Well then, make an appointment and go see him in his office.”

“He wouldn’t see me.”

“How do you know?”

“Anyway, I’d be embarrassed. Successful composers don't do such things. Philip Glass? John Adams? They don’t contact conductors. Conductors contact them.”

A great burst of laughter erupted over at the conductor’s table. He had arrived at the punchline.

“So what’s Plan B? Wait a minute! I have it! Next time the symphony is going to perform, you get to Music Hall early and chain yourself to the railing, right out in front, where everybody can see you. Tell ‘em you refuse to take nourishment until the orchestra promises to do your concerto. In short order, the police will hacksaw through your chains and plop you into the hoosegow. You'll have to pay a small fine, sure. But take the big, broad, flexible outlook. Think of the free publicity! What a news story that would make! ‘Local composer arrested for trying to persuade the Cincinnati Symphony to perform his clarinet concerto. Details at Eleven.' How about it?”

“I know you mean well, but --”

“Okay. How about this? We’ll order a bunch of of bright yellow t-shirts and have ‘em printed up to say, ‘Play Sowash’s Clarinet Concerto.” Then we’ll get all your friends and fans to wear them while forming a human chain around Music Hall.”

“Yellow?”

“Green, then. Purple. Fuschia. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. The important thing is: no one gets in or out of that human chain until the Symphony agrees to —“

“Oh, brother.”

“How about a petition drive! You’d be the first composer ever to do such a thing. Start right now, here in this restaurant. Take your napkin around to every table and ask them to sign —“

“Now, look here. I’m not going to —”

“Or just do whatever it is you need to do to win a MacArthur Genius Award or the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Or, better yet, the Legion of Honor. You’ve got friends in France. Ask them to pull a few strings! The Symphony will be knocking at your door!”

“Right. Like any of that’s gonna happen.”

“You're such a mugwump! Here’s the best idea yet! You HIRE the Symphony to play your concerto. They’re in business like anyone else. How much do you suppose they would charge?”

“$100,000 — at least.”

“No problem. How old are you? 65? Okay, then. You’ve got ten years before Rick Sowash's Big 75th Birthday Celebration Concert. Put aside a mere $10,000 a year and, bingo, you’ll have exactly enough Happy Cabbage to hire the Symphony.”

“10,000 a year? Gulp.”

“Make it your 80th birthday then. Put aside $6,666 a year. You shake your head? Then make it your 90th birthday celebration. You’ll only have to squirrel away four thousand clams a year. Again, this head shaking? I can’t believe my eyes. Alright-y then. Make it your hundredth birthday! You’ve got thirty-five years to raise the moolah. Where's my calculator? That’s $2850 per year. $237 per month. Less than a car payment. Eight smackers a day. Are you going to sit there and tell me that you can’t cough up eight smackers a day to get the Symphony to play your clarinet concerto? Are you serious or are you not? Rick Sowash! Hear me! The time has come to ask yourself where your priorities really lie!”

Meanwhile, you can hear clarinetist David Drosinos and the St. Petersburg Symphony under Vladimir Lande play the opening movement from my Clarinet Concerto just by clicking on the link above.

The clarinet-piano reduction of the score is easier to follow than the full orchestral score. To see a PDF of that version, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Dec. 6, 2015

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Easter Sunday!

The vast burgeoning of Spring! The moveless mists of yellow-green foliage all a-hover on the hillsides. Ferns unfolding. The re-greening grass, the swelling buds, the wild chives, the blossomings of forsythia first, then daffodils, then red bud and finally “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now.” Bring on the tulips!

The great resurrection, the northern hemisphere’s great delivery on the promise of joy and hope and gratitude, just for being alive.

“How beautiful, how beautiful,” writes Elizabeth von Arnim in her novel, Enchanted April. "Not to have died before this. To have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this."

Walt Whitman’s “The First Dandelion” gets it said, once and for all:

Simple and fresh and fair, from winter's close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass,
Innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

A fine thought, however commonplace and obvious, can never be said too often.

Von Arnim and Whitman notwithstanding, I attempted to say it, too, in the first movement of my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra, cast in the bright and brassy, golden-white key of B flat.

Remember all those concertos in which the soloist bends the orchestra to his will? Beethoven’s concertos cast the soloist as a dominating Napoleonic hero, imposing his will upon the other musicians who share the stage. Such concertos exalt the soloist as a Romantic hero, a poet-prophet-artist, the superior being prevailing over and against the larger society.

All due respect to those great concertos, there would be none of that in my clarinet concerto, thank you very much.

The clarinetist, in my concerto, is a teacher-friend. The clarinetist offers musical ideas, ’teaching’ them to the orchestra, who then joyfully embraces the clarinet's ideas, developing them in cooperation with the soloist. The mood is celebrative, joyful, Spring-like.

The concerto affirms friendship. I wrote it specifically for my good friend Angelo Santoro who premiered it after having prodded me to write it for seven years.

It also affirms tonality and tradition. It sounds, I think, very American, in the manner of Barber, Copland, Randall Thompson and other American composers whose works I admire, with just a touch of the influence of Hollywood best ‘western’ film scores.

Curiously, though the concerto was composed seven years before I became a teacher, it also affirms teaching.

(In my new book, "What Book Next?” I tell the story, quaint and queer, of how I was led, in my mid-sixties, to take up teaching. It’s yet another instance of the quiet work in my life of what I choose to term the Hand of God. I wrote the book specifically to raise funds for ‘my' school, as well as to delight those among my fans and friends who read it. See the P.S. below.)

Isn’t that strange? I never imagined that I would be a teacher. Yet here is this concerto, springing from my own pen, foretelling my destiny, auguring what was to come.

I grasped this for the first time only last week when we listened to my concerto in the Music Theory & History course I teach at Leaves of Learning. As I heard myself explaining to the students that the concerto's soloist was cast in the role of a teacher-friend, I suddenly realized that the work predicts my own development as a teacher-friend.

One’s art grows out of one’s life; one’s life grows out of one’s art.

I have never perceived this so clearly.

Life. A series of marvels and miracles.

Which brings me to another of Whitman’s audacious, vernal quips:

“Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.”

Whitman, my hero. Uncle Walt. I must read “The Song of Myself” again, soon, for the hundredth time.

Speaking of miracles, to hear clarinetist David Drosinos (without whose unexpected, unrequested and very substantial financial support this concerto would never have been recorded — Thank you, David!) and the St. Petersburg Symphony under Vladimir Lande play the opening movement from my Clarinet Concerto click on the link above.

The clarinet-piano reduction of the score is easier to follow than the full orchestral score. To see a PDF of that version, click on the link above.

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Hello —

Thursday is my 70th birthday!

To celebrate, I’ve just published a collection of my humorous writings.

Sales are already soaring into the lower double digits!

All profits will be donated to the scholarship fund of Leaves of Learning, the school where I teach French, Music Theory and Storytelling.

I’m presenting my new book as a gift to friends and fans, requesting a contribution in return, but only if it’s something you can comfortably do. I’d suggest $25, but $10 is fine. $7 would cover the production costs and shipping.

To receive your gift copy, please reply with “send it” in the subject field along with your address in the body of the message

Use Paypal’s ‘send money’ function or write a check payable to Rick Sowash and mail it to me at:
6836 School Street
Cincinnati, OH 45244.

The school deserves support. I have seen the positive effects the school has on students, currently about 285, pre-K through 12th grade.

The school is independent. This allows teachers great freedom but it also means that the school depends upon tuition and fund-raising. No church, municipality or millionaire stands ready to cover a shortfall.

Tuition fees are modest and scholarships are given to students who are needy.

It is an immense joy to give away my life’s work. I send my PDFs of my sheet music and CDs free of charge to anyone who is interested via email. I’d love to give away my books for free but a book is a thing of substance, unlike a PDF, and postage adds up. So this is the most generous way I can conceive to share my new book.

Now let’s listen to the composition of which I am most proud: my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra.

To hear clarinetist David Drosinos (without whose unexpected, unrequested and very substantial financial support this concerto would never have been recorded — Thank you, David!) and the St. Petersburg Symphony under Vladimir Lande play the opening movement from my Clarinet Concerto click on the link above.

The clarinet-piano reduction of the score is easier to follow than the full orchestral score. To see a PDF of that version, click on the link above.

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The pieces of music I share in these emails are mostly works scored for small groups of instruments or for voices. Have you wondered why I rarely share my orchestral works?

I’ve written only a few. Why is that?

Suppose I wrote a symphony. Fine, but if anyone is to hear it I must find an orchestra that will play it and record it. There are many orchestras that would be only too happy to do this -- but, as Humphrey Bogart says to Peter Lorre in Casablanca, “For a fee, Ugarti, for a fee!”

Hiring an orchestra to record my music would cost a stupendous amount of money, an undertaking that is far, far beyond my means.

Only one of my handful of orchestral works -- my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra -- has been professionally recorded. I did not pay for it. David Drosinos, the featured clarinetist, paid the orchestra. Bless his heart! I will be grateful to my dying day.

The expense was enormous. You would be shocked to know the amount. When I thanked him, he said, "What else could I do to advance my career? Rent Carnegie Hall and present a recital? What would that mean to anybody, really? This way, I get to do the premiere recording with a major orchestra of an American concerto I really like. Whenever it's broadcast on American classical radio stations, my name will be mentioned as the soloist."

Thank you, David, with all my heart.

I wanted my clarinet concerto to be large and broad, like a mural in a public place. I wanted to affirm my conviction that tonality, tunefulness and traditional musical architecture are as powerfully expressive as ever in this 21st century. I wanted the music to convey optimism, friendship, the love of Nature, the joy of living. I wanted the concerto have an American sound, to evoke our country's spaciousness and potential, evoking Copland and Barber, mixing elements of folk music, jazz and the film scores of the best Hollywood westerns.

In Beethoven’s concertos, the soloist is Napoleonic; he bends the orchestra to his will. Contrarily, I wanted the solo clarinetist’s relationship with the orchestra to be that of a friend and a teacher -- not an adversary. I wanted the clarinetist to present musical gifts to the orchestra -- exuberant, celebratory tunes that the orchestra would joyfully take up, developing the tunes in cooperation, not opposition, to the soloist.

Most of all, I wanted you, the listeners, to experience the piece as a beneficence, a most welcome gift, like a drought-ending rain, a burst of sunshine, a breath of fresh air.

I sent copies of the CD to America’s 162 classical music public radio stations and the recording has gleaned some broadcasts. David sent the CD to many American orchestras, hoping they would invite him to perform the work. It’s been ten years since the recording was made and I am sorry that I can only report that he has not received any invitations to perform the concerto.

Why not? I am not ashamed to say that it’s a good piece and that concert audiences would love it. The reason is that if a conductor who would slate a performance of this concerto no ‘golden apples’ would be conferred upon him or his orchestra. The audience would clap and go home and that would be the end of it. The world would little note nor long remember.
The conductor would gain no acclaim, no glamor, no accolades, no critical attention for having offered up this major work by … who? Rick Sowash? Never heard of him.

A friend and fan who enjoys my weekly emails recently sent me this account of an attention-getting symphonic concert he attended:

“So-called ‘innovation’ reared its ugly head again in 2013 when the Seattle Symphony commissioned [big name composer] to compose [inexplicable title] which Carol and I sat through. The ‘innovation’ was to eliminate all melody and rhythm, leaving us with 42 minutes of slowly changing timbres and tone clusters -- a huge waste of a symphony orchestra! And he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for such nonsense. I paid money to listen to that?!?
“Then five years later, we had to sit through the premiere of [another inexplicable title], also by [the same big name composer], which almost rose to the level of inane, soothing music one cannot escape hearing at spas while getting a massage or having a soak in the hot tub. Another huge waste of a symphony orchestra! I resolved to avoid [big name composer]’s compositions in the future.”

Who knows how the rest of the audience reacted? Maybe they loved it. But winning the audience’s approbation was not the point. The point was that the Seattle Symphony claimed the “golden apple” of having twice commissioned and premiered a “major work” by a “big name composer.”

Were an orchestra to perform my concerto, they could make no such claim, however much the audience might love it. No critics would attend the concert and then write a review for the New York Times. No credit would be given the conductor for performing music written by a person who identifies with a heretofore neglected societal sub-set. Mind you, that is what they ought to be doing from time to time, don’t get me wrong. I am trying to explain what I mean when I say I have no “golden apples” on offer.

Nor would the orchestra be credited for performing the music of a composer affiliated with an esteemed conservatory or the Music Department of a prestigious university. I’ve never taught music composition; in fact I don’t believe music composition CAN be taught for the simple reason that creativity cannot be taught.

I am on my own. Producing a CD, even with a small number of musicians, is a major undertaking. And CDs are on their way out. How will I get my music ‘out there’ when the era of CD recordings has passed? I have the backing of no institution of higher learning, no conservatory, no arts council, no grant-giving foundation. It’s just me, a one-man band, doing the writing, the recruiting of musicians, the recording, the distribution, everything.

What’s in it for me? Artistic satisfaction. The joy of giving gifts. The hope of uplifting and inspiring others. The freedom to write whatever music I wish and to share it as far and wide as I like. If I was a “big name,” I would be constrained to write so as to please and excite the critics and my “big name publisher” -- G. Schirmer or Boosey & Hawkes -- would never supply my scores for free to musicians curious to discover them. No. They would charge ‘top dollar’ prices as befits a “big name” composer.

I made the right choices … for me. I am serene. Things are as they should be. In any case, it’s all in God’s hands.

Please listen to David Drosinos and the St. Petersburg Symphony play the nimble third movement of my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra. Click on the link above.

If you want to see a PDF of the orchestral score, there's a link to that as well, but the clarinet-piano reduction of the score is much easier to follow.

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This morning, I’m “thinking out loud” as write these words, so pardon me, please, for my self-indulgence and for going on at length. Feel free to skim.

What should I compose next?

Last week, I finished a four-movement string trio (violin, viola & cello), my sixth work for that adorable combination of instruments, on which I had been at work for a month.

But I have no plans to get it performed and recorded. Why not? Because my friends, “The Cincinnati String Trio,” are already knee-deep in the process of rehearsing, performing and recording three OTHER works for string trio, which I wrote last summer. It’s just too soon for me to ask them to take on the preparation and recording of ANOTHER big work. They “have lives,” after all. They have families, they have jobs, they have gigs, they have students.

So … though I would like to write yet another work for string trio, the resulting work would have to wait even longer to be recorded, perhaps two or three years, because I have other projects in mind for those three musicians. For instance I have a fine piano quartet ready and waiting which has also never been performed or recorded. Plus plenty more.

You might say: why not write an opera, a concerto, a symphony?

Suppose I wrote a symphony. Fine, but if anyone is to hear it I must find an orchestra that will play it and record it. There are many orchestras that would be only too happy to do this -- but, as Humphrey Bogart says to Peter Lorre in “Casablanca,” “For a fee, Ugarti, for a fee!”

Hiring an orchestra to record my music would cost a stupendous amount, perhaps $50,000, which is far, far beyond my means.

Only one of my handful of orchestral works -- my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra -- has been professionally recorded. I did not pay for it. It was David Drosinos, the featured clarinetist, who paid the orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Symphony. That was twenty years ago and the fee he paid would amount to $50,000 in today’s dollars.

When I thanked him, he said, "What else could I have done to advance my career? Rent Carnegie Hall and present a recital? What would that mean to anybody, really? This way, I get to do the premiere recording of an American concerto which I really like and with a major orchestra. In the years to come, whenever this concerto is broadcast on American classical radio stations, my name will be cited as the soloist."

David: “I can no other answer make but thanks and thanks and ever thanks.”
(that’s from Twelfth Night)

“But,” you may ask, “what about the Cincinnati Symphony? Your next door neighbor. Surely they would be glad to play your music for free.”

No, they would not. I would be astonished if the conductor would even recognize my name. I am below their radar, beyond their ken, in a different neck of the woods. We do not move in the same circles; let’s put it that way.

Were I to write an opera, a concerto, or a symphony, the score would just sit ‘on the shelf’ and the music would never be heard. That is just too discouraging.

Well, then, how about writing music for one or two instruments with piano accompaniment? flute-piano? oboe-piano? cello-piano? Trouble is, I already have about two dozen such pieces, waiting patiently until my friends who play those instruments find the time to learn the music, perform it and then record it. If I wrote more such pieces it would make the backlog even longer.

Well, then, what about writing for larger combinations of instruments? I have! I already have two suites for flute-oboe-viola-cello, waiting in line. I already have two larger pieces, in multiple movements for flute-oboe-trumpet-piano-violin-viola-cello, also waiting to be performed and recorded.

Write for standard ensembles like woodwind quintet or string quartet, you say! Again, I already have a half dozen pieces written and patiently waiting their turn.

You see? It’s a dilemma.

Some composers just turn the faucet and let the ideas flow, regardless of whether or not the music is likely to be performed in their lifetimes. Schubert is the best example of this. In his lifetime there was only ONE public performance of his music; he enjoyed some private ‘home concerts’ sponsored by his friends but most of his works were not performed while he was alive.

I was talking this over with my cellist friend Michael Ronstadt. He said, “The only reason we have any music to play is because someone somewhere took the trouble to write it down, sometimes regardless of whether or not they knew it would be performed in their lifetime.”

He’s right. Suppose it takes five or ten years to record all the music I already have waiting on the shelf. Will I still be around? If I am not still around, will someone contact my son, who will be the executor of my estate, and arrange to have the scores sent to musicians who inquire so that they can be performed and recorded? Maybe. “And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” It is an encouraging thought.

What conclusion, then? Write whatever you like and have faith that eventually someone will play it and record it? Yes, but maybe define the situation a bit more narrowly. Michael has committed to recording my new cello music in a series of CDs to be titled “Ronstadt plays Sowash, Vol. 1”, then Vol. 2, then Vol. 3, which will offer all of my as yet unrecorded cello music.

Well, how about starting now to write the music that could be, two or three years from now, featured on Vol. 4? In other words, there’s no reason to stop writing for cello when I have a superb cellist friend who is ready, willing and able to perform and record what I write, given enough time.

If the new pieces won’t see the light of day for three or four years, so what? What’s the hurry? Sure, I’d like to be here to see that happen but if I am not, so what? “Ars longa, vita brevis est.” (Art is long; it’s life that is short.)

You might wonder, why the emphasis on recording? Because I send recordings of my music to 160 radio stations some of which sometimes broadcast my music to audiences that are very large. Here in Cincinnati, WGUC has 100,000 listeners. Strange to think that when they broadcast my music THAT MANY people are hearing it. Radio is where it’s at. What concert hall could offer a comparable number of listeners?

(Mind you, no radio broadcast can inspire and impress us as deeply as the performance of musicians performing “live.” That is unmatchable.)

I recently asked my “friends and fans” to contribute toward the costs of making such recordings and, by golly, the response so far has topped $12,000! An inspiration and a strong shot in the arm! We are busily making recordings now. In fact, this afternoon, this very day, my newest piano trio, #6, subtitled “Brickdust & Buttermilk,” will be recorded. In time it will be featured on a CD and I will share it with you in these Sunday morning emails.

One step at a time.

It makes me think “The Garden Song” which Pete Seeger sang:

“In by inch,
row by row,
gonna make
my garden grow.”

May it be so.

Meanwhile, if you have any answers to the question I asked at the beginning of today’s message, your suggestions would be most welcome.

Now let’s listen to some music, the third movement of the clarinet concerto I mentioned above.

I wanted this piece to convey optimism, friendship, the love of Nature, the joy of just being alive. I wanted the concerto have an American sound, to evoke our country's spaciousness and potential for good, extending into our own time the traditions of the music of composers like Copland and Barber, mixing elements of folk music, jazz and the best Hollywood film scores.

Most of all, I wanted you, the listeners, to experience the piece as a beneficence, a welcome gift, like a drought-ending rain, a burst of sunshine or that first breath of air when, after a dive into deep waters, you come back up to the surface.

Or at precisely this moment, when Winter is receding and “as if no artifice of business, fashion or politics had ever been,” the green shoots of daffodils are re-populating our gardens.

Please listen to David Drosinos and the St. Petersburg Symphony playing the nimble third movement of my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra. There's a link to it above.

If you want to see a PDF of the orchestral score, click on the link above.

But the clarinet-piano reduction of the score is much easier to follow. To see a PDF of that version, click on the link above.

I'd love to know what you think about this music; feel free to reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
March 16, 2025