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Answering the Clarinet Call

December 11, 2014

Dr. Timothy Bonenfant of Angelo State’s music faculty can make a clarinet purr or scream, cry or chuckle, and he demonstrates that virtuosity on the 16 tracks of the album “Multiple Personae: The Family of Clarinets.”

Released in August, the album features Bonenfant performing contemporary music for a variety of clarinets. The music written and directed by his friend, teacher and mentor, Virko Baley, a Ukrainian-born composer who has been a professor of music at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), since 1970. Dr. Michael Schneider, a pianist from San Angelo who lives in the Austin area, also performs on the recording.



“This is a CD to demonstrate Virko’s music,” Bonenfant said, “but it is also a demonstration of what I do, a demonstration of the instrument and all the versatility in clarinets.”

For example, the first composition, “Partita No. 4 for clarinets and piano,” features the Bb bass clarinet in the Overture, the A Clarinet in the second movement, Songs Without Words, the Eb clarinet in Dance Without Words and the Bb contrabass in Passacaglia.

Bonenfant owns seven clarinets and borrowed two more, including a nearly 6-foot-tall Bb contrabass clarinet, for the recording.

“Most people, when they think of clarinet, they think of the Bb clarinet,” Bonenfant said. “I was assuming that the Bb clarinet would be the instrument that would be played the most but it wasn’t. The contrabass had the three longest pieces. The Bb clarinet was second.”

“‘Multiple Personae’ is a CD to demonstrate Virko Baley’s music, but it is also a demonstration of what I do, a demonstration of the instrument and all the versatility in clarinets.”

Dr. Timothy Bonenfant

A native of the Maryland-Virginia area, Bonenfant started lessons as a fourth-grader with a next-door neighbor who played clarinet in the Naval Academy Band with Bonenfant’s father, a drummer.

“I thought it looked cool,” Bonenfant said, “and it grew from there.”

He met Baley at UNLV while earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees focusing on clarinet performance. In 2005, Bonenfant became the first UNLV student to be awarded a Doctor in Music Arts in clarinet performance.

“I’ve worked with Virko for over 30 years,” Bonenfant said. “I was a student of his, then I became his copyist, preparing all the parts for whatever scores he was composing. Now, it’s all computerized, but then the work was all done by hand. From there, it evolved into all sorts of activities. I started playing his music in the 1990s.”

Baley said the idea of multiple clarinets gradually evolved.

“Tim plays and owns a number of them, so it made sense,” Baley said. “He decided his dissertation was going to be on my clarinet music so I wrote the ‘Partita’ for him. He is very much connected with this piece. The next stage was to record it.”

It was after an August 2011 performance of a contrabass piece that Bonenfant felt he had enough Baley compositions for clarinet to do the album.

“The biggest problem was finding a pianist who would enjoy the music enough to want to do this,” he said. “It’s modern on a number of levels, especially rhythmic.”

He and Schneider had met not long after Bonenfant joined the Angelo State music faculty in 2005 with his freshly awarded doctorate.

“He was walking by my office while I was practicing,” Bonenfant said. “He decided at that point that he wanted to do something with me. We’ve been working together now off and on for at least half a decade.”

Dr. Timothy Bonenfant

He sent music scores and recordings of the Baley compositions to Schneider, and in 2012 they began recording.

“We recorded that summer,” Bonenfant said. “We did three concerts of the whole program to get ready for the recording. The next summer, we had to redo one track. The past year we’ve been editing.”

Now the musical tribute to the instrument Bonenfant loves and to the works his teacher and friend Baley composed is available for purchase online at TNC Music.

“Composers tend to write for certain instruments because there are performers around who encourage them,” Baley said. “You hope that the principal audience is as wide as possible but in reality the initial audience will be people interested in new music and, of course, clarinet players of all sorts. One hopes a couple of the pieces will gain wider interest.”

The “Multiple Personae” album is available for $12.95 from TNC Recordings.

Dr. Timothy Bonenfant’s Recordings

2014 “Multiple Personae: The Family of Clarinets,” composed and conducted by Virko Baley with Timothy Bonenfant, clarinet, and Michael Schneider, piano, TNC Recordings, $12.95, TNC Music

2013 Recorded Concertino for bassoon and chamber ensemble by Frederick Lesemann for a CD to be released by Janis McKay of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, faculty.

1998 Played bass clarinet on “Voyage From The Past: Walter Blanton and Dharma,” Cambria-Troppe Note.

1997 Played clarinet on “The Body of a House: Music of Walter Blanton,” Cambria-Troppe Note.

1997 Played solo clarinet on “San Francisco Chronicled: The Chamber Music of Steven Horowitz 1990–1996.”