Clara Perra

Clara Perra Naples Teatro di San-Carlo 1983

Clara Perra (Naples November 1954 - Roseto degli Abruzzi - August 2015) was an Italian solo percussionist , music educator, pianist and composer.

She was the first Italian woman to hold concerts of percussion instruments and to teach them in State conservatories. Author of compositions and educational works, Clara Perra won several national auditions and an international competition, at the Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. She played at the Italy on Stage festival in New York and in several concert tours she performed in repertoires ranging from classics transcribed for vibraphone, like Schumann, Bach and Mozart to the "classics" of contemporary music such as Varese and Cage (which, among other things, included the percussion part and the prepared piano of "Amores" performed for the first time ever in Naples).[1]

Biography

Clara Perra New York Italy on stage festival1987

With a precocious but misunderstood talent, and despite having started to study piano at the age of six, Clara Perra did not immediately begin to study music. After listening to a concert of percussion instruments, as she herself declared in an interview, she “succumbed” to the "rataplan" rhythms, event that convinced her to leave Medical School and enrol in the music conservatory. In a short time, she graduated in piano and percussion instruments (the latter degree with honours and a special academic mention) and began studying composition with Maestro Aladino Di Martino, director of the "San Pietro a Majella " Conservatory in Naples.

In 1984 she was the only Italian percussionist to become part of the Orchestre des Jeunes de la Mediterranee [2] (with which she performed in major European capitals). Later, she won four national auditions and an international competition at the Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. She played in this theatre for over a decade, collaborating with world renowned conductors and performers. She had a brilliant career which became a reality with hundreds of performances, both as orchestra conductor and soloist, to the point of earning the unconditional praise of most biased critics against percussion instruments played by women, and against transcripts of the classics.

She played at the Italy on stage festival in New York (1987); at the Wiesbaden festival (1983) and several International Festivals of Ravello; she directed various groups of percussionists and participated in numerous recordings of contemporary and experimental music.

Before completing her musical studies, she was already part of the Franco Ferrara Orchestra, the Scarlatti RAI[3],, the jazz-symphonic Italian[4] Symphony Orchestra and the soloists of the Tempo di Percussione Ensemble,[5] a formation with which she also performed during the concert season at the Teatro di San Carlo.

Regarding her teaching material, she illustrated the technique contained in the DVD "Percussion and Drums School" (Curci 1995); she participated in the recording of the CD accompanying the book "Beyond the Rudiments" (Carisch 2004); she wrote essays, compositions and methods. Particular highlights include the work released in two volumes "Music Between Rhythm and Creativity" (Curci 1987): a project in collaboration with Antonio Buonomo, for which the distinguished newspaper "Corriere della Sera" devoted a full page review) and "Il Braccio del Tempo" (Simeoli 2015): a handbook that reveals the "secrets" of the orchestra pit, with amusing anecdotes about the conductors. It clarifies the concept of "visual rhythm" and concludes with polyrhythm exercises for two and three voices.

Her profession as a soloist and orchestra conductor always ran alongside her work as a teacher and conductor of percussion ensembles. After teaching at conservatories in Benevento, Foggia, Potenza and Salerno, in compliance with the absurd law that prohibited people who played in an orchestra to teach, in 1991 she was forced by law to leave the orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo, to maintain her role as a teacher. Becoming a tenured professor at the "A. Casella" Conservatory in Aquila, and later at the "Luisa D'Annunzio" Conservatory in Pescara, she trained an entire generation of soloists, conductors and teachers. In her spare time, Clara Perra was a voluntary for blood donor association AVIS (Italian Association for Blood Donation) and the C.R.I. (Italian Red Cross). For this reason, due to a mild illness, she was taken to the hospital by her own colleagues where she was observed for a long time. Unfortunately, she was transferred to a more suitable hospital only when the symptoms of encephalitis became more evident. And so, while doctors were studying her case without finding a cure, Clara Perra passed away, never realising that the medical profession she had abandoned in order to devote herself to the study of music, had been incapable of saving her.

Clara Perra Pescara 2011

Main publications

Main collaborations

12 concepts to remember

  1. Anyone can produce noises by striking a percussion instrument, but only the expert touch can raise these noises to the rank of musical sounds.
  2. Real music is not what we play and hear ourselves, but what reaches the ear of the listener.
  3. Very often a grip, style or technique that has been created and used by a virtuoso player may be used by other players only after suitable correctives have been made.
  4. You have to learn to "talk musically" by giving just the right stress to the various elements that make up the music. A forte is not just a violent, "wooden" sound, while a pianissimo should not be considered merely as a quieter sound.
  5. Every musician needs to find inside himself or herself what the true rhythm is - the rhythm that allows you to breathe as you keep the pace, and leads to a human interpretation of music that no metronome can help you with.
  6. Correct playing of an instrument such as the marimba is a question of geometry: if the shortest distance between two points is used (avoiding needless shifts and returns to notes that are to be replayed), good technique can be achieved even at speed.
  7. Technique exercises must have a musical sense, and, as we have already written earlier on, should not just serve to loosen up articulation, but be pleasant, so as to train the ear musically, be rhythmic, so as to reinforce the sense of balance, and essential, so as to produce maximum results in the minimum time.
  8. Relaxed playing doesn't mean playing in a totally laid-back manner because in that way you wouldn't hear the musical pulsations intensely enough. The right balance consists instead of a sort of vigilant and controlled relaxation, which can be obtained with a very slight contraction, limiting actual relaxation only to the articulations making the mallets move.
  9. Like a violinist with his bow and a pianist with his fingers, so also a percussionist with his mallets can control movement, articulation and weight to achieve various expressive effects.
  10. Any new technical innovation is like a new medicine: it has first to be tested thoroughly before it can become popular.
  11. Start from the roots of the music, from its history and from its rules, if you want to have a solid basis for any cultural or instrumental revolution.
  12. Don't just read what the composer has written. All musical models require a playing style that should be learnt at the source. Knowing the origins of the music, and its cultural context and message, is the only way to keep clear of any sort of humbug.

Some prizes and awards

Notes

  1. ↑ Musica città - Accademia musicale napoletana
  2. ↑ Orchestre des Jeunes de la Méditerranée
  3. ↑ Orchestra Scarlatti
  4. ↑ Italian jazz synphonic orchestra
  5. ↑ Manifesto dell'ensemble (1974)
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