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Kevin Vaughn

Please briefly share your history with SSW-how & why you joined, etc.

I retired in August 2010 and moved to Oregon, arriving here Labor Day weekend.  My instruments traveled in the car with me.  I stayed with friends from the iris world before my furniture arrived and when Judy Nunn visited and saw all my instrument cases marked BUFFET she screamed “You’re a clarinetist!!”   She was a clarinet major at U Oregon and said “Oh I know the group that could use you.”  A quick call by her to Keith Weathers and I was playing, 10 days after arriving here.  In MS, I played in 2 symphonies and a wind symphony and I had thought my career as a musician might be over. Not the case!   My first rehearsal was memorable as one of the rods on my alto clarinet decided to fall out during the rehearsal after being jiggled 3K miles from MS.  Since then, I’ve played a mixture of clarinets, generally Eefer and bass, and had lots of solos that have been fun.  Besides the SSW, I have also organized a clarinet choir and a woodwind quintet that have been doing the pre-concert program and assisted with the promotional radio interviews by providing musical interludes.

It may seem strange to some but Eefer is my favorite instrument and my teacher premiered all the Strauss tone poems on Eefer. Most clarinetists avoid it like the plague but I have played it since I was 9 years old and have done many of the major orchestral solos.  Aside from these orchestral war horses, the concert band literature is the other place where the Eefer can shine.  I’m now working on a concerto for Eefer and concert band called ’Scent”.  It is a fun one.

As personnel manager, I’ve gotten to know the musicians in SSW much better.  It is a wonderful group of interesting and talented people.  I am pleased that many of them are now friends.  Finding musicians to fill in spots has been a challenge at times and I’m sure that cellists must hide if they see me on the street.  My begging sometimes got results though.

What do you miss most about SSW rehearsals and performances?

I like music that challenges me so rehearsing it is a great mental exercise and it also means having to listen within and across sections.  Sometimes this is challenging as the flutes go sharp as they go high whereas the other woodwinds are going flat. Sharing our work with friends in the audience is interesting and we have some sophisticated audience members.

What piece of music performed by the SSW has had the most profound effect on you?

 Several years ago I performed the West Coast premiere of “The Castle of Doctor Bassclar” for bass clarinet solo and concert band. In addition, we had interpretive dancers from a very talented dance troupe from Monmouth to interpret the piece, which freed me from doing the theatrics.  The piece itself is extremely challenging, with a 4 octave range for the bass clarinet and multiphonics, grunts, key clicks, and flutter tongue.  My mouthpiece could not make the multiphonics required in the piece so Clark Fobes made me a mouthpiece that would.  Life threw another couple monkey-wrenches into this piece.  I came down with a case of shingles in my THROAT that was incredibly painful.  In the first performance the interpretive dancer knocked my music on the floor and I was playing music pickup as the next entrance came. I did pick it up after losing two measures.  The second performance, a week later, went much better.  I had enough anti-virals in me to cure anyone!

Please share any thoughts you may have about the Salem Symphonic Winds.

SSW has taken me places musically that I hadn’t experienced in my previous 48 years of playing.  I like a challenge, not something I can sight read. Some of these pieces have been great challenges. Amazingly, despite the challenges, our concerts have been in the most part highly successful.