The Joe Allard Project: Student Interviews: Edwin Riley

Edwin Riley
Telephone interview by Debra Jean McKim
30 March 1999
Columbus, Georgia

From: McKim, Debra Jean. Joseph Allard: His Contributions to Saxophone Pedagogy and Performance.
Published Doctor of Arts Dissertation, University of Colorado, 2000.

Used with permission of both Debra Jean McKim and Edwin Riley
Copyright 2000, Debra Jean McKim

Riley: I studied clarinet with Joe at Juilliard from 1962 to 1969. I got my master's degree in 1966. Then I was in the West Point Band for three years and continued to study with him while at West Point.

ER: I studied with Bernard Portnoy for two years before I studied with Allard. I wish I had studied with Portnoy after Allard. Portnoy took me through a lot of literature. Joe's lessons tended not to be literature oriented for a long time. It was not until my last few years of study with him that we really went through any literature other than jury pieces each semester. I would say that in terms of sound and concept of playing, Joe was my primary teacher. As far as literature, I'd have to say others were also primary.

ER: In preparation for this interview, I watched Joe Allard's video, "Joe Allard: The Master Speaks." Watching the tape reviewed and refreshed in my mind many of the things that he taught. I had some rather bad habits when I went to Juilliard. Joe was a great teacher to help establish in terms of fundamentals - what you do physically when you play.

What I discovered over time is that, although I value the concepts that Joe taught, I would not conduct a lesson the way he did. He tended to be focused on very fundamental physical aspects of playing with very little literature, and I find that is a very narrow approach for a lesson. What I do is much more of a process, which includes scales, patterns, etudes, and a solo.

I did benefit from Joe's musical knowledge later on. If I had stopped lessons at the end of two or three years I would have had a very different perspective about Joe. But there were many things I really value in my playing and teaching that Joe gave me. Joe taught me to absolutely minimize the pressure on the reed. He had to do this when he played because he had upper and lower dental plates. In the process of learning how to minimize the pressure on the reed, I learned a single-lip version of a double-lip embouchure. No excess pressure is exerted, just simply a holding pressure. One of the most insightful comments made to me was by Tom Ridenour. He said, "You sound and look like a doublelip player." It is interesting that I sometimes switch to double-lip just for short periods of time as a way of restoring my embouchure.

To demonstrate minimum upper lip pressure, Joe would raise the upper lip and play with the upper lip off the mouthpiece. If you really look at someone who studied with Joe for any length of time you'll see the characteristic configuration of the upper lip. The upper lip closes the opening and the lower lip essentially holds closely to the teeth, like the felt covering on the hammer of a piano key.

One of the principles that has always stayed with me is the idea that you feel the reed with the lower teeth. The lip is nothing but a covering; it doesn't exert any inward motion at all. The average person might think you're pulling the corners back with this embouchure, but you're only preventing inward motion. The corners stay exactly where they would be at rest. I've often thought about the fact that Joe taught there are physical differences between what you do with double-lip and what you do with his version of single-lip. One of them is that with double-lip, you cushion inward, whereas you really don't cushion inward with the embouchure that he taught.

Joe spent a lot of time on what to do physically with the air. He had a specific breathing exercise that he would show his students, where you would lie flat on your back, then get up on your elbows, arch your back and put your thumbs on the back of your ribcage to prevent any kind of downward motion of the ribcage. I really learned how to breathe correctly in his studio. I also have a singing background and after studying with Allard for a while, I studied with a very fine vocal teacher named Paola Novikova. She was from the Italian bel canto school. Everything for her was singing on the air column and this really coincided with what Joe taught. She went one step further. She had me wear a wide band around my waist, and I expanded against that when I took a breath. If the breath wasn't correct, she would have me exhale and start again. Essentially it was the same thing that Allard taught, that when you breathe. you expand the ribcage and when you play, you play with the diaphragmatic muscles. The ribcage stays in the expanded position until you completely relax.

I don't get into breathing with my own students in nearly the depth that Joe did. If there's one regret I have it's that I don't spend enough time dealing with correct breath control with younger students. I tend to approach it more obliquely.

Once you get past the idea of actual breath control, what Joe taught was embouchure control and making sure that you have an absolute minimum amount of excess pressure in the embouchure. You felt the reed with the teeth, and the lower lip was basically glued to the teeth and offered no real function other than cushion.

Besides the actual embouchure, the tongue position was the other key thing. The tongue position was very high. Joe called it French coning. This is the natural position for a French speaking person, the French "tu." Americans always tend to speak naturally with a very low tongue position flat down in the oral cavity. When you lift your tongue, there's a little string muscle in the front. He'd get you to press against that muscle with your finger to relax it. Once this muscle is relaxed then the tongue is completely relaxed. Then you can push the tongue forward in the oral cavity and still have room for the mouthpiece to go into the mouth. Most people keep their tongue pointed when they play.

I remember struggling to keep this tongue position correct, especially when I went into the high register. What I've retained is just a sense of the feeling of the tongue completely relaxed of all linguistic tension with no point. The tongue is up against the top teeth in the back with the `forward coning' position where the forward part of the tongue comes very close to the hard palletand produces a fine stream of air into the mouthpiece. I think that's really one of the secrets to the kind of tone quality Joe was able to get

I remember struggling to keep this tongue position correct, especially when I went into the high register. What I've retained is just a sense of the feeling of the tongue completely relaxed of all linguistic tension with no point. The tongue is up against the top teeth in the back with the `forward coning' position where the forward part of the tongue comes very close to the hard pallet and produces a fine stream of air into the mouthpiece. I think that's really one of the secrets to the kind of tone quality Joe was able to get.

ER: Oh, absolutely. Voicing was an important concept. But I have moved away from the way Allard taught overtones. What he did was start with a note in the upper register and then he would pull the mouthpiece of the clarinet out of the mouth slightly until the lower overtone popped out. He would play overtones on the whole fundamental register starting on high C and working down to middle B. The second level was to include the next overtone, 2-1-fundamental on the same range. But it's very hard to play the harmonics in the right hand especially going down to C/F and B/E. My initial approach to harmonics with a student starts with the clarion G. I get the student to "squeak" up to the high E, then repeat the same procedure on a' and b'. What you do with all this is learn to voice.

DM: It doesn't sound like there was much difference between his clarinet and saxophone teaching.

ER: I think he would probably deal with overtones more extensively on the saxophone, but that's really the only difference.

ER: One of the things I liked about Allard was that he was very analytical. I'm also by nature analytical. I realize, however, that every student does not learn that way, and I find it is very important to be able to pick up the clarinet and demonstrate the things I'm talking about. I recall that he did not play much in lessons, although he could demonstrate how to do things with control. He had a beautiful sound when he did play.

Let me tell you a story. One time for a jury, Joe took out his reed case and said "here, pick out a reed for your jury." He would go over to France and pick out a hundred reeds. He would actually pick them out by trying them on his instrument. That was like getting a hundred boxes of reeds and picking the best reed out of each box. He'd bring them back and they wouldn't always work as perfectly over here. If a reed wasn't absolutely the best for him, he'd give it to a student. It was like manna from heaven.

I did see another side to Joe. There was nothing he wouldn't do for his students. But in 1985 I was involved in planning the ClarFest convention in Pittsburgh. If you know Joe, you realize he was disappointed that he was not appreciated on a larger scale. Anybody that studied with him appreciated him, but he didn't have a popular reputation like Leon Russianoff. So this was my opportunity to ask Joe if he would come and make a presentation at the convention. But he did not understand that if he came and gave of himself at the convention he would get that wider reputation that he so much wanted. At the time we were not providing any honorarium, and he said he wasn't interested in coming without the honorarium. That was a disappointing thing for me, and it showed me a side of him that I never experienced as a student. I just wish he had seen the larger picture - how much he could have shared with everyone by coming to one of these conventions and doing a masterclass.

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