Russell Harlow, a
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
ist, grew up in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
and lives in
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
. He is the co-director of the Beethoven Festival Park City (formerly named
Park City International Music Festival)
Park City Music Festival announces 26th season
''Park Record'' (July 6, 2010) ("Festival co-director and clarinetist Russell Harlow is famous for his quips to the audience") and Autumn Classics Music Festival and performs and records with the Sonolumina Ensemble. He also founded and directed the Nova Chamber Series in Utah before joining the Beethoven Festival in 1986.
Career
Harlow studied first with clarinetist Gary Foster, then Mitchell Lurie, and at the age of twenty-one, joined the Utah Symphony
The Utah Symphony is an American orchestra based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The orchestra's principal venue is Abravanel Hall. In addition to its Salt Lake City subscription concerts, the orchestra travels around the Intermountain West serving c ...
where he served as Associate Principal Clarinet. He quit the Utah Symphony to pursue his solo, chamber music and recording career. He also studied with Harold (Buddy) Wright, the late Principal Clarinet with the Boston Symphony, and with violinist Charles Libove. During July 2007, Harlow performed at the International Clarfest in Vancouver, BC and has also performed at Clarfests in Texas, Utah and (in 2020) in Nevada.
Harlow worked with clarinetist and mouthpiece expert Lee Livengood on the design of a new clarinet mouthpiece. He has also republished a volume of etudes for clarinet by Louis DeSantis. The etudes are paraphrasic – melodic studies on difficult solo passages from Thomas, Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
, Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
, and Rimsky-Korsakoff
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov . At the time, his name was spelled Николай Андреевичъ Римскій-Корсаковъ. la, Nicolaus Andreae filius Rimskij-Korsakov. The composer romanized his name as ''Nicolas Rimsk ...
. Harlow turned the work he had originally planned for an interactive DVD-Rom history of the clarinet into the website ClarinetCentral.com.
In 2015, Harlow, along with Lee Livengood, directed the annual Utah Clarinet Festival, held at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where Harlow has served as interim clarinet professor for the year. The Russell Harlow Clarinet Competition at UVU is named in honor of Russell Harlow.
In addition to chamber music and orchestra performances and recordings, Harlow has recorded solos on a number of television and movie soundtracks.
He released a CD titled ''Works for Clarinets and Strings by Ingolf Dahl, Bohuslav Martinu and Karel Husa'' on the ISOMIKE label. As Associate Principal Clarinet with the Utah Symphony, Harlow is featured on nearly every recording the Symphony made from 1971 to 2012.
References
HBDirect
* http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=5239
SA-CD.net - Dahl, Martinu, Husa - Sonolumina Ensemble
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harlow, Russell
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
American clarinetists
Musicians from Utah
Musicians from Los Angeles
Place of birth missing (living people)
21st-century clarinetists