Originally published in The Clarinet 52/3 (June 2025).

Copies of The Clarinet are available for ICA members.

Clarinet Chronicles

After a wonderful Low Clarinet Festival this past January and with ClarinetFest® 2025 just around the corner, I thought it would be valuable to highlight one of the most exciting and significant aspects of each of these conferences: the premiering of new works for the instruments in the clarinet family. Indeed, at ClarinetFest® 2024 in Dublin, over 100 world premieres were given, while over 40 were given at the 2025 Low Clarinet Festival in Glendale, Arizona. With all the great standards in the clarinet canon, however, you may wonder, “Why premiere new works?” To help answer this question, I reached out to several ICA members who actively commission new music and have given world premieres at the two most recent ICA conferences. To these performers, I posed the question, “What do you enjoy the most about commissioning or premiering new works?”

“I like building relationships with composers and creating a dialogue to fully realize the experience for listeners.” — Patrick Englert

“I enjoy the process of learning a piece that has never been performed. Deciphering what the composer wanted and adding my interpretation without any preconceptions is very stimulating and satisfying.” — Jack Liang

 “I love commissioning music because it’s a contribution to the community, to pedagogy, and to the repertoire at large. I prefer to commission music with a pedagogical purpose, which can yield tangible results for teachers and students and create something with longevity and purpose.” — Olivia Meadows

“I like being part of the creative process and having the freedom to make artistic decisions in the performance process.” — Stephen White

All of these responses highlight different elements that make commissioning and premiering new works so special—building relationships with composers, actively collaborating with them to create something new, and not being bound by the expectations, conventions, or performance practices for an existing work.

When you work with a composer to bring a new piece to life, you often get to wear many hats. Of course you take on the role of performer, but you may also have to play the part of a researcher to figure out how to achieve the composer’s vision. As an interpreter of a new work, you will help determine how subsequent performers approach it, giving added weight to the premiere performance. You will also likely take on the role of collaborator, working with the composer to help determine the overall shape and scope of a piece, or discussing more granular details during the compositional process. All this leads into perhaps your most important overarching role—that of a creative artist helping to bring new art into the world and to the broader clarinet community.

It is also important to note that with so many new works being composed and premiered every year, there are more and more different voices, backgrounds, and experiences being represented on the international stage—every new work is a chance to showcase the rich and diverse community of clarinetists of which we are all a part. As Meadows highlighted, these works might serve a specific purpose that aids students and teachers, giving them multiple layers of significance and meaning, but even when they are simply created as art for the sake of art, there is always value in artistic exploration and in the creative act—after all, as the late, great clarinetist, composer, and all-around musical pioneer William O. Smith said, “music will die if you don’t refresh it.”

We hope you’re able to attend ClarinetFest® 2025, and if you do, go listen to some premiere performances. Talk to your composer friends. Take part in the never-ending task and joy of refreshing music!