Russell Harlow

Russell Harlow, a clarinetist, grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Utah. Russell is the co-director of the Park City International Music Festival^[1] and Autumn Classics Music Festival and runs both the Sonolumina Chamber Orchestra and the Contemporary Music Consortium of Utah. He also founded and directed the Nova Chamber Series in Utah before joining the Park City Music Festival in 1984.

Biography

Harlow studied first with clarinetist Gary Foster, then Mitchel Lurie, and at the age of twenty-one, joined the Utah Symphony where he served as Associate Principal Clarinet. He quit the Utah Symphony to pursue his solo, chamber music and recording career. He also studied with Harold (Buddy) Wright, the late Principal Clarinet with the Boston Symphony, and with violinist Charles Libove.

During July 2007, Russell Harlow performed at the International Clarfest in Vancouver, BC. This was his third time as guest performer for Clarfest - he performed the Schickele Quartet for Violin, Cello, Clarinet and Piano at the Lubbock, Texas, Clarfest and the Reger Quintet for Clarinet and Strings at the more recent Salt Lake City Clarfest. In Vancouver he will perform the Karel Husa "Evocations de Slovaquie" Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Cello with cellist Jesus Morales and violist Leslie Blackburn Harlow.

Harlow is currently working with clarinetist and mouthpiece expert Lee Livengood, on the design of a new clarinet mouthpiece. He has also republished a volume of etudes for clarinet by Louis DeSantis (with the permission and good wishes of the DeSantis family). The etudes are paraphrasic - melodic studies on difficult solo passages from Thomas, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff.

Harlow turned the work he had originally planned for an interactive DVD-Rom history of the clarinet into the website ClarinetCentral.com. The ClarinetCentral.com website is visited daily by clarinetists around the world.

For 2015, Russell Harlow, along with Lee Livengood, is directing the annual Utah Clarinet Festival, held at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where Harlow has served as interim clarinet professor for the year.

In addition to chamber music and orchestra performances and recordings, Harlow has recorded solos on a number of television and movie soundtracks.

Recent CD Release: Works for Clarinets and Strings by Ingolf Dahl, Bohuslav Martinu and Karel Husa. ISOMIKE label. As Associate Principal Clarinet with the Utah Symphony, Russell Harlow is featured, sometimes as Principal Clarinet, on nearly every recording the Symphony has made over the past thirty-nine years.

A great student of clarinet playing throughout history, Russell Harlow researched the late and nearly-forgotten clarinetist Louis DeSantis, eventually locating his children. With the cooperation of the DeSantis family, Harlow brought out the corrected edition of DeSantis' New Studies for Clarinet. He also wrote a cover article for The Clarinet, the magazine for the International Clarinet Association, that brought DeSantis to the attention of clarinetists worldwide.

Additional information: http://www.hbdirect.com/album_detail.php?pid=429837

Reviews of the ISOMIKE Recording

http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=5239

http://www.sa-cd.net/showreviews/4711

Regarding DeSantis: http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=137126&t=137126&v=t

References