A Short History
of the
Linden
Woodwind Quintet
The Linden Woodwind Quintet was founded
in 1974 by five musicians who were then attending the Manhattan School
of Music. The group was originally named the Caloroso
Quintet. The members thought the name meant, "warm and passionate",
but one time an audience member remarked that it really meant
"hot and sweaty", so the group had to find another title.
Someone came up with the idea of naming it after the linden tree
and that is the name it has been ever since.
One of the main reasons for getting
the group together was to play on the streets of New York for
money. Members played outside what was then the Hallmark Card store on 56th
and Fifth Avenue most of the summer nights that year. The location
had decent acoustics, excellent lighting and a lot of people going
by, so it was a popular place to play for the Quintet and other
groups. A musician could perform for three or four hours and come
home with the munificent sum of $30 or $40 for the night.
There were also other advantages to
playing there. Many of the passersby would stop to listen, like
what they heard, get to know the members and hire the group on
the spot to play for parties, weddings or other special occasions.
People in the group soon realized that a big problem was that there wasn't really
a lot of fun and interesting music for a woodwind quintet
to perform, both for the players and the listeners. There were a few
arrangements and number of pieces originally written for woodwind
quintet such as those by Reicha or Cambini, but the pickings were
pretty sparse.
Around that time the movie, "The
Sting" was released. The film used a lot of the rags of Scott
Joplin and there were soon a few arrangements for sale of popular
rags, but we felt that many more should be made available.
One of the players (either Mitch or
Bill), came up with the idea of arranging a piece to add to the
repertoire. It was a success and that started the process
of all the members of the quintet making arrangements. Nearly
everyone in the group was soon doing pieces for numerous occasions.
Often, when an individual would hire the quintet to play at a wedding
or a party, someone would comment that they just loved Mozart
or Sousa or the Beatles and could we do such and such a piece?
We'd say, "Sure", and then someone would go home
and arrange it specially for the event. Also, often when playing on the
street, someone in the group would come in during the night and
announce that they had transcribed something new and we would play it on
the spot.
Some of the arrangements were used just one time and never played
again. Many other times, the group would play the piece, realize
that it was a great transcription and it would become part of the
group's standard repertoire. At all times we could gauge how good
the piece was by the audience's reactions to it.
Sometimes we would have a large crowd
around on a street and get finished with a piece and then see
a torrent of quarters, a flurry of dollars and a few five dollar bills flying into our
open case. When that happened, we knew the piece was a winner
and it would become a part of the working repertoire. One time
we tried to do an inventory of pieces and counted close to 400
of them. Many were not that good and quite a few, such as pieces
by the Beatles and George Gershwin, are still in copyright, so
most likely we will never publish them. We have decided that of
the 400 there are about 250 that are worthy of publication.
The group played on the street for,
perhaps, three or four years during warm weather months.
There must have been hundreds of people who played with the group
during the years, subbing for the original players when they were
busy working elsewhere. Everyone had to be an excellent sight reader,
not only because of the many different pieces we played, but many
of the members creating the arrangements had nearly indecipherable
handwriting.
Sometime during these years, the group
caught the eye of the late Edmond Karlsrud, who booked various
musical groups on tours throughout the country, usually under
the auspices of Community Concerts. He auditioned the group, said
he would like to use us but could not for the next few years or so because he
booked concert tours years in advance. Everyone kind of forgot about it for the time being.
Soon after that, it so happened that one of Mr. Karlsrud's
groups had a last-minute problem that made them unable to make their tour. He called the Linden members and asked
if they could do a tour on just a few day's notice. They said, "Yes", and that started
about 12 years of tours with the quintet throughout the USA and
Canada.
Today, our members are all busy professionals
playing in major New York City orchestras and shows. We don't
get together as often as we'd like, but when we do, we play and
enjoy the repertoire first created for our street playing days
long ago.