I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking and taking a few lessons and thinking about being someone who can improvise for 20 years now.  I’ve been so ashamed I am tied to the written page, sometimes afraid I will have nothing musically to say, and afraid to really try.  Now that my big race is over, I called up Billy Novick, clarinet teacher extraordinaire, who I found through a famous New Orleans clarinetist who a friend of mine went to Harvard with a few years ago.  He declined and said he was retired but then offered to see me irregularly.  I went to his house the next day!

Hadn’t played in over six months, squeaked, tonguing was horrible, scales were horrible, and he made me just play in C or D while he played some chords on piano.  I WAS TERRIFIED!  I did better than I thought but also was pretty bad – gotta start somewhere.  I was thinking he had no idea what he got himself into when he offered to see me next week as well….

Have some hard homework in memorizing chords and improvisation to do for next week but the journey has begun…