The clarinet is not a baton

And you are not a ballerina

Every so often I come across a YouTube video or see, in live performances, players swinging their clarinets around, making exaggerated body movements, and dancing around while they play, and I wonder why they aren't wearing tutus and toe shoes and twirling batons.

I suppose all that prancing and swinging the clarinet around in the air is supposed to communicate the players' involvement with the music. I also suppose that it's supposed to impress the audience with the player's own experience of musical rapture. And I have to suspect that it has something to do with the player's narcissism, at least as far as performance is concerned: "Look at ME! See how well I play!" "Forget the music, it's ME that you should pay attention to!"

People who perform like that remind me of so many pop bands that put on a great show with fancy choreography, lighting, and pyrotechnics to cover up their lack of ability. 

Being blatantly uncharitable as I am sometimes, I usually feel that instrumentalists who do these things are less concerned with the music they're playing and how well they're playing it and more concerned about putting on a big show of playing, hoping that the audience will confuse all the prancing around and waving and gesticulating with good musicianship. (This could be unconscious, too.)

I wonder how many of those people actually stand in front of a mirror practicing their moves, maybe even trying to invent a clarinet version of the Moon Walk.

Regardless of the reasons why, here's why I, myself, can't watch one of these performances.

• That stuff is hellishly distracting. It interferes with the interface between me and the music, adding an unnecessary dimension to performances without enhancing anything, but distracting me.

• Waving the clarinet around widely and wildly creates acoustic "disturbances" that bother me. Listen to one of the chronic and extreme "bell wavers," and you will likely here a type of Doppler effect, where the pitch of a sustained note changes as the bell goes 'round, and the timbre of a sustained note changes also.

Have I, myself, "moved" when performing? Of course I have, but only when the music has told me when I must, and then never to excess.

Watch performances by top-flight players like Luis Rossi, Karl Leister, David Schifrin, Leslie Craven, Mark Nuccio, and Ricardo Morales. No theatrics. 

Might they be better performances with dancing and bell waving? I doubt it.

Over and out.