Mrs Curly and the Norwegian Smoking Pipe - Background.
I made my very first musical instrument with my Dad. It was a cigar box guitar with a single string made from fishing line. I was about 7 years old, so I guess it was really my Dad who made it. Four years later when I was 11 years old my Mum found an ad in the local paper for a second hand clarinet for $20. We bought it and I ended up studying classical clarinet for ten years. That was the beginning of my love for single reed instruments, and although I stopped playing clarinet when I was 21 I began searching for other instruments that could take it's place. (I eventually came back to playing clarinet 15 years later due to my love of the Greek and Turkish clarinet music).
In 1971, a bamboo grove in Glenfield (outer Sydney) started me on my journey of woodwind instrument making. I began by experimenting with making bamboo flutes and then moved on to using timber, learning woodturning and making folk and renaissance flutes. In 1976 I travelled to Europe measuring renaissance and baroque woodwind instruments in museum collections and ended up in London where I established a workshop making mainly renaissance flutes for 2 years. During that period I spent 8 months in Macedonia learning the gaida (Macedonian bagpipes). On returning to Australia in 1978 I again set up an instrument making workshop, and influenced by the time I had spent in Macedonia I also began making Macedonian and Bulgarian gaidas and experimenting with other wind instruments.
During the 1980's I moved between Sydney, Perth and Broome, sometimes making instruments and sometimes performing and running workshops and also setting up the North Perth Ethnic Music Centre. In 1987 I moved to the Adelaide Hills to be near my beautiful lover and partner Jessica and again set up an instrument making workshop, this time beginning to develop my own designs such as the tarogatino (inspired by the Hungarian tarogato) which developed into the saxillo (the instrument I have spent most time developing and improving over a period of 23 years).
This was the beginning of the shift towards designing my own single reed instruments. In 1989 we moved back to Sydney and as well as making instruments from timber I started exploring the possibilities of instruments made from found objects for an exhibition with two of my sisters Jenny and Ana. I first used some of these house and garden instruments with the trio "Paranormal Music Society" and later during the 1990's with the marimba based band "Xylosax", but especially in a series 8 solo shows (1990 - 2014) which have toured all around the world featuring the live looping of music made from found object instruments (from rubber gloves to bicycles, including the kitchen sink).
Since 1990 I have lived on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia and during that time have combined instrument making, performing, running Community Music workshops, composing and creating and directing shows. A long term musical collaboration with Tunji Beier beginning in 1996 created the World Music duo "Dva" and it is particularly for this music project that I have developed the many and varied types of folk clarinets which I call "clarini". This word is partly a diminutive form of "clarinet" but also influenced by the Greek word for clarinet - "clarino". The clarinis I have developed are made from various materials and are in a wide range of tunings. They use various mouthpieces (alto sax, clarinet, sopranino sax). I have also experimented with bass clarinis using non-linear bores (instruments on this album such as "Bella", "Donna", "Crow" and "Mr Curly". Some of these instruments are made from glass (Mrs Curly, Bella and Donna) and these are collaborations with Glass artisan Arnie Fuchs.
This album documents 15 of my invented wind instruments. Mostly they have been played in a solo context on one of my "Live Looping" shows or within the duo 'Dva'. They are often seen as fun and quirky, and some of them are! However this project is more about their musical qualities, and to let the instruments express their own musical strength and beauty. Here I play them in an ensemble with three fine musicians - Tunji Beier (percussion), Philip Griffin (strings) and Louise King (cello). I have had a long history of playing with both Tunji and Phil. Tunji and I have played together for 18 as the World improvising duo "Dva", and I first played with Phil in 1983 and have worked with him on various projects including the album "Last Priorities" and the "Kin Kin" album and Australian tours with "Ross Daly and friends".
I hope you enjoy this album. It is dedicated to all the people (and there are many) who have inspired me, and assisted me on my journey over the years, especially my gaida teacher Lazo Nikolovski who died earlier this year at the age of 92 in Dračevo, Skopje. It is also dedicated to those people who show us that we are all musicians and that music is something we can all create rather than merely consume. Having said that - thanks for purchasing this album.
Linsey Pollak - 2014