Brahms with Maestro Ashkenazy

An audition for Vladimir Ashkenazy turns into an impromptu reading of the Brahms f-minor Sonata together.

Unforgettable... the man exudes music and vitality from every cell of his being!

Cavallini: Caprice in Do Maggiore

John Hixson, clarinet

Recorded May 12, Studio Ryota, Tokyo

Grand Duo Concertante

Full Circle

In Asia, where I now live, life is commonly regarded to unfold in 12-year cycles. From my own empirical research, recently that resonates quite true.

It's just a couple months short of twelve years ago that I marched off stage at Lincoln Center with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Juilliard as a clarinetist, together with fellow DMA partners in crime like Jeremy Denk and surrounded by a motley musical crew that included Van Cliburn to one side and Meredith Monk the other, (there to receive honorary versions of that same, most dubious, distinction).

Fortunately, I was the youngest clarinetist in history to be finding himself in such bewildering circumstances, because none of it really mattered to me so much, funnily enough. I was just on a constant high from the insatiable musical curiosity that I inherited from almost ten years of studying with Charlie Neidich.

And because of that, it seemed like I had time on my side and that it was the most natural thing in the world to go off to Europe to pursue conducting. And it was great to study with Panula and Salonen and Boulez. And great to work with those orchestras in Finland, Italy, Moscow and NY. Unforgettable. And, after that, it even seemed completely natural to take a few years' sabbatical from classical music for shakuhachi. Kurahashi Yodo II is and will remain a profound inspiration.

In any case, in a roundabout way, that's what brought me here to Tokyo - a city that I can only say rivals or surpasses Paris as the cultural and gourmet soul of the world - a highly subjective view, of course... (but then, there are those pesky Michelin stars).

But for all of that musical curiosity, and an amazing journey, it has simply resulted in an intense desire to return to my original voice. A voice now informed, of course, by many new sources, but finally, my voice.

The dreams were what brought me back - vivid, intense and visceral. The music of Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Nielsen, Messiaen - all that music that is in my blood. Of playing the clarinet. Dreams like I never had before in my life. It had been easy enough to block out the fact that for the last couple years I was constantly discovering my fingers dancing on an imaginary clarinet, but the dreams were something else altogether..

So, it was off to find an instrument. DAC is an amazing place to shop. Tens of instruments, of the highest order, of any model. You like Vandoren 5RV Lyre? Fine - here is a velvet-lined tray with 40 to try and find which suits you best.

And, as with Proust's madeleine, an amazing rush of memory, emotion and textures sprang from the reunion. I hadn't played for a couple years, however -- that luster of sound, the depth, the full palette of colors, the lyrical sense -- it all came flooding back.

And so, a new story emerges - the ends are the beginnings, and the enchanted labyrinths of Borges ring out.

It is very good to be back.