Ciaramella, the Renaissance Wind Band, is in town this week for a masterclass and concert at Case. We reached shawm player Adam Gilbert in Los Angeles to ask about his career as a specialist in early wind instruments.
Mike Telin: What I first want to know, you are a shawm player. How does one go about becoming a shawm player?
Adam Gilbert: That’s a really good question. It’s changed in the last bunch of years, I think. I came to shawm because I was a recorder player. Long story. I played recorder as a kid because I wanted a clarinet – to be like Benny Goodman. That was pretty geeky in the first place, but then after I started playing clarinet I realized I wanted to play recorder, and that’s how I got involved in early music. And that was because I actually saw a concert of my hometown college collegium.
MT: And where was that?
AG: Columbia, South Carolina. I was thirteen, and that was the moment that I discovered Renaissance dances and was really excited by it. I went to New York to go to music school in January of 1981 and when I was there I was told, it’s great, you can study recorder, but my teacher said, I’ve got a gig for you if you can play a little bagpipes and shawm. A lot of people of my generation got into it from playing a lot of Renaissance instruments but nowadays you see a lot more modern oboists or baroque oboists going back and playing the earlier instruments because they’ve already had that specialty of playing double reeds.
Minnesota’s Twin Cities’ early music group, The Rose Ensemble, brings a new touring show to Cleveland on Sunday afternoon. ‘Il Poverello’ features music written in honor of Francis of Assisi. We chatted about the new production with founder and artistic director Jordan Sramek at the ensemble’s offices in St. Paul last Monday.
Olivier Latry, one of the Titular Organists of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, and one of the most celebrated recitalists in the business will play an engaging recital on the Berghaus organ in Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron on Friday, October 9, at 8 pm, opening this year’s edition of the distinguished series run by Barbara MacGregor and James Storry.
