music and more

Hello I am Geraldine Allen another member of the tutti.co.uk team, living in North London England. My background briefly is that I spent over 20 years working as a professional clarinettist until I had a road accident which stopped my playing career. After that I had to develop lots of different talents but it is amazing what the experience of being a professional musician enables you to do. This week has its normal variety of activities, I still do some teaching mainly to adult players , most of whom started playing in their youth and then have had to give it up for various reasons and have come back to it in later life, normally with abounding enthusiasm! One such person this week wanted the deifinative answer to whether you should put the clarinet away between practice sessions or whether it is OK to leave it out on a clarinet peg. The most important element to this is to keep the bore of the instrument clean and dry. It is preferable to pull it through, ensuring that the joints are dry before putting it away. However, if you are practising for 3 or 4 hours a day as I was at the height of my career, then it is OK to dry it and put it on the peg. I would normally always put it away at the end of the day though. One of the pleasures of working on the tutti.co.uk site has been to distrubute performances of many of my clarinet colleagues who have a fascinating repertoire that I look forward to sharing with you over the coming days. Let's start with Janet Hilton - head of the woodwind department and professor of clarinet at the Royal College of Music in London playing the music of Hoddinut, Harper and Machonchy with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Enjoy!
Geraldine