KORI BARKLEY
Staff Writer
Ian Clarke, a leading musician and composer in the flute world, spent this past Tuesday at Fredonia. This was a “marvelous treat” for Susan Royal and Fredonia’s flute studio. While in Fredonia, Clarke presented a lecture sharing his concepts for the development of a creative idea during the process of composition, or in performance, gave a master class and performed some of his original works, accompanied by I-fei Chen-Markham on piano.
It was safe to say the entire flute studio adored Clarke and his animated, enlightening personality and infectious energy.
“To be human is to be creative,” was how Clarke began the discussion, sitting on the edge of Rosch’s stage to signify that he was a creative equal to his audience.
Clarke’s music displays many imaginative aspects and captures listeners with innovative, modern techniques (like timbral trills, harmonics, finger trills, finger glissandos, singing into the flute and many more) that create hauntingly lyrical and breathtakingly beautiful passages. He believes it is our generation’s job to manifest creativity.
To demonstrate how he curates an idea, Clarke simply instructed everyone to imagine they were daydreaming and doodle anything they’d like on a piece of scrap paper for 60 seconds — a pure form of creativity. Many agreed that this minute provided a calm, focused and easy feeling.
He then demonstrated the idea of transferring that feeling to music by playing improvised passages on his flute.
“Explore sound and ‘doodle on your instrument’ as if you had a blank canvas with a fresh palette of paint and a paintbrush,” he said. “The rules are: there are no rules.”
“I liked the idea of calling improvisation ‘doodling,’” flute performance and music education major Elizabeth Root said. “When you think of improvisation, even when you’re just practicing alone, there is a preconceived notion that you have to sound like a jazz great, adding pressure. When you think of playing your instrument as ‘doodling,’ possibilities are endless and it takes the pressure off, leaving more room for creativity.”
While the talk was mainly geared toward flutists, it was informative to all instrumentalists.
Throughout his discussion, Clarke also opened students’ eyes to a more simple way of perceiving complex scales and key signatures, gave insight to his peculiar work, “Hatching Aliens,” and inspired students to create a sense of imagery within their music by way of exploring layers of sound.
“Instrumentalists try to illustrate virtuosity with notes and articulation instead of sound,” he explained. “Dynamics are important, but they are only one-dimensional. Color and texture are multi-dimensional and give music a sense of direction.”
Dimension of depth, reverberation speed, color, texture and dynamics: these were just some of the examples Clarke shared as ways to effectively explore sound.
“Imagination is the key to creativity,” he concluded. “It’s amazing what [one] can do with a force of creativity.”
Following the discussion, members of the flute studio got a chance to work one-on-one with Clarke in a master class, held in room 1075 of Mason Hall .
“I was so nervous to perform for Ian Clarke, but his humor and genuine nature made me feel comfortable when it was my turn to perform,” Nicole Murray, senior flute performance major, said.
“His feedback was concise and the advice he gave was not overly-critical, but rather inspirational and encouraging,” she continued. “I left that master class eager to return to the practice room in the hopes that maybe some day I can become half the amazing musician and person that he is.”