Del lifted the little nut out of the box and sat it in the palm of her hand. She had no memory of it, yet when she clasped her hand around it, feeling the bumpy surface, she understood what her Grandma had felt. There was a glow of contentment she could not explain, but felt familiar and welcoming. She tried blowing on the mouthpiece and was surprised to hear a rich, woody tone sound out. It was not unlike a piccolo, but with a character all of its own. Del smiled at the thought of her grandfather carefully splitting it into two and crafting the solid little instrument to prolong the life of his granddaughter’s first toy. Her own memories of him were faded, but she had fond recollections of him at work in his shed. Now she had something he had crafted with love, with his own hands, in that same place. She set it back down into the box and picked up the next letter. 

I recall you telling me, when you bought your beloved Buffet, how you still had fond memories of your first clarinet, despite its flaws as a very basic student model. It had a tendency to lose grip on the reed, which then slipped away from your lips, forcing you to learn how to hold it in place with your mouth until the end of whatever piece you were playing. As if it was not already hard enough to get a note out of it at all. Since you left it at my house so that you always had something to play when you came to visit, I have tried myself, but it never sounds any better than a choking goose in my hands. With your touch, however, it always comes to life with the most beautiful music I know of. What was it your Grandpa called it? “The prettiest-sounding vibrating stick in the world”, yes, that was it. He loved teasing you like that, but it did lead to some great conversations, didn’t it? 

The two of you would go off for hours to his workshop and build all sorts of contraptions for making strange noises - hosepipes attached to an old toilet bowl, a one-string violin with a string that stretched the whole length of the house, attached to my kitchen door at one end and a wheelbarrow at the other to act as the soundbox and then there was that Rube Goldberg drum machine using golf balls, biscuit tins, drainpipes and wheelie bins. I honestly don’t know who had more fun putting all those things together: you or him. He certainly got so much enjoyment sharing all those sound experiments with you, but given the unusual ways you find to coax new sounds out of your clarinet, I think you might actually have learnt much more than even he was aware of teaching you. 

Take that school concert you performed at, for example. Remember that night? You played with the wind band early on, the Pink Panther theme and something else that slips my mind. A fairly typical high school performance, with the expected number of out-of-tune instruments, wrong notes and wonky rhythms, so that it was hard to make out those who were performing well. With only one clarinet in the band, it was at least a bit less of a struggle to hear you, but the setting certainly didn’t do you justice. Then came a variety of small choral groups, string quartets and solo performances with varying levels of quality, from the pleasant to the painful.

When the head music teacher introduced the band before you, he seemed almost apologetic and certainly rather disparaging. I can only imagine that was just because he didn’t like their style of music, since most of the audience seemed to be tapping their feet and clapping along with them as they played through a short medley of rock songs from the previous two or three decades. In terms of talent they were certainly the best band who appeared on stage that night. They were pretty tight and clearly well-rehearsed, with a bit of stage presence that gradually overcame their nervous start. I seem to recall them winning a couple of local battle of the band type competitions in the following couple of years. Nice boys.

Anyway, I could see you sitting in the audience watching them, along with your friends in the wind band. That expression was written on your face, you know, that slightly distant glaze over your eyes that means you are taking something in, but at the same time absorbing it and transforming it, combining it with your knowledge and experience to come up with something new. As the band finished off to a long round of applause and you stepped up onto the stage in their place, I could see the expressions of people around me in the audience. They were pitying you, Del, knowing full well that there was no way that a solo clarinet performance could come close to what they had just heard. I even heard someone behind me whispering to her companion that it was unfair to put you on after them and expect you follow a performance by a full rock band.

Your music teacher was no fool, though. He was probably banking on just that attitude to highlight your abilities, though judging by the look on his face by the end of your performance, he certainly wasn’t banking on what he actually heard. I could see he was puzzled when you nipped to the side of the stage and fiddled for a moment with the mixing desk settings, but when you started playing he relaxed in his seat to enjoy the show, his fingers twitching in a mime of what you were playing. It was a piece by Robert Linn, quite the contrast from the rock songs that had preceded your performance, starting very gentle and building up pace with some tricky-sounding faster trills towards the end, but the audience fell into silence and listened with attention, giving you a good round of applause when it was completed. I could see from the twinkle in your eye that you were up to something, though, as you bent down to change some settings on the guitarist’s effects pedals, which had remained on stage, whilst the audience quietened down to prepare for your second piece. 

It was supposed to have been a Stravinsky solo clarinet piece, but within a bar or two I realised you were playing “The Star Spangled Banner” instead. Oh, my dear, did you see the look on your teacher’s face? I thought he was going to pass out, clearly stunned that you were dropping the complexity of Stravinsky for something so simple. Then it happened. You hit the last note of the first verse and stamped your foot down on the effect pedal, turning the pure clarinet sound into a distorted wail that rang out, making your teacher physically cringe. Then you hit another pedal, a delay I presume, and the sound looped off into receding echoes, letting you take a deep breath and then dive into the rest of the performance, which turned into a note-perfect recreation of Jimi Hendrix’s version of the tune, complete with screaming distortion, note bends and crazy trills. When you finished, leaving the delay running and the sound of the clarinet fading slowly into the distance, there was silence for a moment before the biggest round of applause of the night by far. Your teacher leapt to his feet waving his arms in the air and the rest of the audience joined in a standing ovation: well-deserved, in my opinion. The last couple of performances were by the school choir, which was good, because there is no way that any single performer could have followed up what you did. When the concert came to an end you were practically swamped by a crowd of students gathering round, patting your back, hugging you, high-fiving you or just clapping in continued support for your performance.

Needless to say, after that it was expected that you would come up with some amazing mix of styles in the following years at school concerts. Much as I love the classic rock music of the last century, I’m glad that you always included at least one more traditional classical piece in every performance as well as whatever new showpiece you came up with. Whether that was your idea or your teacher’s, I’m not sure, but I did meet him on the high street a week or so after that first concert and he was full of admiration for your technique and creativity. He did admit, though, that when you started play the Hendrix he was less concerned about your ability to pull it off and more worried that you’d set the clarinet on fire by the end of the performance!