Sowash: 三月 “March” from A College Town Diary:  Twelve Months in Gambier for alto saxophone

Hello —

Looking back with a sigh, Jo and I agree that the happiest period of our lives were the eight years we lived in tiny Gambier, Ohio, seat of Kenyon College.  We lived there from 1986 to 1994, inhabiting a charming, 19th-century home with fireplaces, cozy low ceilings, wormy chestnut beams, exposed brick walls, old windows with wavy glass and little bubbles in the panes.  We were surrounded by hardwood forest on three sides and our two-thirds of an acre boasted no less than forty mighty oak trees.

Every spring the yard burst forth in, truly, about 10,000 daffodils.  Previous owners had planted them but we dug up the bulbs, busted them apart and replanted them so that they spread and spread, more each year.  The results were amazing.  The yard looked like a movie set or the cover of a bulb-seller’s mail-order brochure.  Villagers walked past our house, just to see the display of daffodils.  O

Best of all, our kids were little and, every moment of every day, we felt that we were, not just a couple, but a family living together.

Our next door neighbor was Susan Browning, a devoted amateur clarinetist and a passionate dog-lover.  Sometimes she called to ask if our noble Springer spaniel, whom we had named “Binsche,” would like to come along with Trim, her stately, beautiful collie, for an ice cream cone treat.  The dogs would pile into Susan's car and we’d watch as Susan backed out of our driveway, the dogs’ heads already sticking out the partially rolled-down back windows, tongues out, ears flapping in the wind.  When the three of them returned, Susan would very seriously assure us that “the boys” had enjoyed their ice cream, as if we had doubted if such would be case and were in need of assurance.

In 1993, Susan commissioned me to write a suite for unaccompanied clarinet.  She did not want a virtuoso concert work, just a set of fun, short pieces that she could play at home for her own amusement.

I wrote twelve little pieces for her, collectively entitled, A College Town Diary:  12 Months in Gambier.

The piece is a “diary,” i.e., a private journal of thoughts, sentiments and sarcasms, carefully recorded but not necessarily intended for public scrutiny.  Being a “diary,” the piece is personal, opinionated and a little eccentric … like Susan.

Twelve movements — even short movements — would make a long haul for a clarinetist performing unaccompanied on front of an audience.  Now and then clarinetists have fashioned a handful of the movements into short suites, more suitable for concert use.  That’s fine.  Last year I devised a “Suite from A College Town Diary,” arranging six of the movements for clarinet and piano.

(By the way, I’ll gladly send PDFs of these scores — free — to any of you who are interested.  Just ask.)

These days, Jo and I live in the historic heart of Cincinnati, a city with much to admire culturally, scenically, historically and some things to deplore, such as the nation's second-highest rates of homelessness, hunger and poverty.

We moved here for the educational opportunities the city offered our children.  After they graduated from Cincinnati’s celebrated School for the Creative and Performing Arts and left home, Jo and I stayed on in Cincinnati.  We wouldn’t be as happy in Gambier now, not without our little kids living at home with us.  And we’ve changed, too;  a tiny Ohio college town, surrounded by woods and cornfields, would feel too small.

That difference is particularly felt during the month of March.  March is no treat in an Ohio city but in rural Ohio, March is bleak, almost unbearable.  Muddy, cold, gray.  No holidays, except when Easter comes early.  St. Patrick’s Day doesn’t amount to much in a rural Ohio village.  Bockfest and March Madness are unknown.

Or rather, in a college town, there are no March holidays for the Townies.  For the students and faculty, there’s Spring Break!  They get to leave!   It’s the one joyous thing about March!  Off they go, to warmer places where they will, you may be assured, like Binsche and Trim, enjoy their ice cream.  Thus, my “March” movement is joyful after all! And less than 90 seconds long.

(The music for the “March” movement is not a march, by the way.  More like a leaping-and-bounding dance.  I reserved the notion of writing a march for the “July” movement, to evoke Gambier’s delightful Fourth of July parade.)

To hear Bill Perconti play “March” from A College Town Diary:  Twelve Months in Gambier on the alto saxophone, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/Coll_Town_March.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/Coll_Town_March.pdf