On July 13, 2025, sculptor and painter David Adickes died at the age of 98. He was best known for gigantic sculptures, like Sam Houston off I-45, busts of all the US presidents, the Beatles, and a whimsical cellist outside the Wortham Center in downtown Houston. He was also an amateur clarinetist who created this imaginative clarinet in 1953 and gave me permission to use it here. Thank you, David!
Welcome!
Since retiring from clarinet studio teaching at Rice University’s Shepherd School of music, I have had more time for my two big projects: The Clarinet Book for Oxford University Press and Clarinet Adventures, a complete teaching method.
Covid 19 impacted my performance schedule drastically, cancelling a recital of Jewish music at Houston’s Holocaust Museum featuring Klezmer, Benny Goodman tunes, the Artie Shaw Concerto, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sonata. Now I’m planning to revisit part of this program at the Shepherd School on April 24. 2023: No Weinberg - instead songs by Jewish composers like Bernstein, Arlen, Weill, and Previn with Susan Lorette Dunn and Leone Buyse in the Previn.
I continue as artistic director of Houston Youth Symphony, which has won multiple national awards during the last decade, including the The Foundation for Music Education’s Mark of Excellence and The American Prize (website, blog).
Both my wife, flutist Leone Buyse, and I have coached the Youth Orchestra of the Americas during the summers since 2005. Recently its name was changed from YOA to OA, reflecting a gradual increase in quality, age, and professionalism of its members (website). Now OA has established OAcademy, an online resource for musicians aged 18-30. Leone and I also teach at the Texas Music Festival at the University of Houston, which resumed after COVID in 2022 and continues in June, 2023. We have also begun to teach at Atlantic Music Festival at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. I encourage all clarinetists to join ICA and follow my articles on teaching in The Clarinet magazine, dating back to 1998. My 85th article will appear in the June, 2023 issue, after which I’ll retire from writing them. They are all available in the James Gillespie Library at clarinet.org.