While at Carnegie Hall, Stephen Williamson plays Benny Goodman’s clarinet

On June 25, 1982, more than 44 years after his debut there in mid-January of 1938, legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman (1909-1986) played his final concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The appearance helped kick off that year’s annual Kool Jazz Festival, a 10-day extravaganza whose starry roster also featured Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Buddy Rich, Joe Williams, Mel Tormé and vibraphone virtuoso Lionel Hampton.

As for which of several clarinets (“licorice sticks,” he called them) in his collection that Goodman played that evening, it’s hard to say. But there’s a good chance it was a 1970 Buffet Crampon model crafted in Paris. Goodman’s daughter Rachel Goodman Edelson donated the instrument to Carnegie Hall in 1988. That momentous gift inspired generous financial support from Susan and Elihu Rose to build what became the artifact-packed Rose Museum, where Goodman’s stick has long resided under sealed glass with a set of Lionel Hampton’s mallets, two of Gene Krupa’s drumsticks and a baton once wielded by Leonard Bernstein.

But it’s not just a museum piece, it’s “still alive,” as Tomoji Hirakata, who helps service the clarinet for Yamaha Artist Services, has said. And like most living things, it needs an occasional workout to stay in decent shape. That’s partly why some top clarinetists have been invited to give it a whirl. Not many, though — only 10 so far by Rose Archives director Kathleen Sabogal’s count, including jazz great Paquito D’Rivera.

Another member of that elite group is CSO Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson, the only person to have played it twice. Having first done so on Oct. 3, 2012, when the CSO opened Carnegie Hall’s 122nd season, Williamson got another chance earlier this month before the CSO performed at Carnegie on Jan. 21. Surrounded by a handful of onlookers (including one with a video camera) in the Rose Archives, he launched into the cadenza from Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, which Goodman commissioned in 1947 — three years before premiering it on NBC Radio with Fritz Reiner and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, on Nov. 6, 1950. (While its concert debut came a few weeks later at Carnegie Hall, Ralph McLane was the featured clarinetist with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the first public performance on Nov. 28, 1950. Goodman, born in Chicago, himself didn’t perform the piece at Carnegie until Nov. 16, 1960.)

“I had to do a bit of work on the instrument,” Williamson recalled by phone from Stillwater, Oklahoma, the CSO’s final stop on its Winter Tour 2025, “because the keys were a little sluggish and binding a bit, which can happen when an instrument is just sitting for a while. Especially with the weather changing and when it gets really cold.”

Aside from those kinks, Goodman’s clarinet also has a “very different feel” from the ones Williamson plays. Its longer mouthpiece would have required a different reed, so Williamson used his own. Also, the instrument’s tone was noticeably sharper, and its unique ergonomics affected how his fingers sat on the tone holes. Soon, however, Williamson got comfortable (or comfortable enough) and launched into the cadenza. “Of all the jazz clarinetists, Goodman had the most classical and centered sound,” Williamson said. “He was able to play an instrument that was slightly sharper, but he would relax and everything would fall into place.”

So that’s what Williamson did — or attempted to do — relax. “I tried to imagine easing into Benny’s performance mode. Everything sounds easy and so effortless when he plays it, so I tried to make it as effortless as I could. And I could really feel the relationship between the intervals as I was going through the cadenza. It’s a great instrument, and a great instrument for that concerto.”

Around two minutes in length, the cadenza is arguably the most musically dazzling portion of Copland’s roughly 18-minute piece. It’s also “very challenging technically, but fun,” Williamson said. “I don’t want to get too mystical, but you can’t help it when you’re playing on the instrument that one of the truly great clarinetists in history played on. And I knew he played the Copland [concerto] on this instrument, so I really wanted to channel his energy. And honestly, I believe that when someone plays an instrument for a while, part of their soul goes into that instrument. I could hear qualities of [Goodman’s] sound in it. There was a fluidity and a sweetness.”

For Williamson, Copland’s concerto has significance beyond the Goodman connection. He first heard it in junior high school when it came on the radio. “It started and I was transported,” he recalled. “The beginning through the cadenza is just amazing. After that, it’s like a jazz romp through the clubs. I had one of those mono tape cassette players, and I rushed over and put it right next to the radio and I hit the record button. For years, until I was able to purchase the album, that’s what I listened to. I listened to that recording until the cassette wore out.”

In light of his personal history with the composition and the fact that Copland’s concerto “touches so many different emotional [aspects] that the clarinet can do very well,” Williams said playing it on Goodman’s instrument was “a real thrill” that went beyond anything he’d imagined. Just holding it, he said, would have been enough.

“It’s one of those moments where you’re like, ‘I am not worthy, but thank you.’”