Gershwin® by Special Arrangement: Clarinet Book & Online Audio

Carl Strommen's arrangements strip away the improvisational demand while preserving the jazz language that makes these Gershwin standards essential listening. You get authentic swing, blues inflections, and sophisticated harmony without requiring your clarinetists to navigate chord changes or develop solos. The online audio keeps rhythmic precision sharp and models phrasing that students can internalize immediately.

Witty, urbane, and rhythmically buoyant. These arrangements capture Gershwin's gift for melody that feels both spontaneous and inevitable, with harmonic colors that shift between sophistication and pure song-like beauty. The clarinet sits in its richest register throughout, allowing players to experience the warmth and expressiveness the instrument brings to American song.

Intermediate clarinetists who want to play jazz-influenced repertoire with sophistication but without the pressure to improvise or sight-read complex chord charts. This book works for private studio students preparing for jazz recitals, ensemble members in school jazz bands seeking standard-setting material, or any player ready to explore swing and blues language within composed arrangements.

• Treat the swing eighth notes as triplet-based rather than mechanically even; listen to the audio to absorb the natural lilt before rehearsing without it.
• Shape the melody through dynamic contrast within phrases rather than treating entire sections at one volume; jazz phrasing lives in the details between written notes.
• Balance articulation between the legato passages and the rhythmic hits; some Gershwin lines blur, while others need to punch through, and the arrangement marks these distinctions clearly.
• Lock into the accompaniment's harmonic rhythm during the variation sections, where the clarinet often carries the primary line while the ensemble shifts underneath.

Program a Gershwin evening that showcases your jazz ensemble's ability to honor classic American standards with style and precision. Alternatively, feature selections from this book in a recital celebrating twentieth-century American composition, pairing them with instrumental works by Copland or Bernstein to trace the threads of concert music and vernacular tradition.

• Swing articulation and interpretation
• Blues-inflected phrasing and expression
• Reading jazz notation without improvising
• Balancing rubato within a steady harmonic framework
• Dynamic shaping in standard-setting melodies