Julian Bliss is singular. He began his clarinet career around the age of 12 and has been before the public, working with major orchestras and playing in large venues, ever since – which is to say for nearly a quarter of a century.
This is not uncommon in the world of the piano or the violin, but it’s hard to think of any other clarinet player whose career has had a similar arc.
Bliss began with Mozart, whose Clarinet Concerto – which the composer wrote at the age Bliss is now – he plays with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra tomorrow.
He’ll be using the deeper-toned basset clarinet, which has been wresting this work from the more familiar clarinet in A, which has fewer low notes.
“Every instrument has mainstays,” he says, “and the Mozart is certainly one of them. I think the first time I learned it must have been 2001 or 2002. Having lived with it for a long time, your interpretation changes quite a lot – not even intentionally sometimes, but just as you grow and develop as a musician. And also as a person, your thoughts, your intentions, the way you play, hopefully it gets better and better over time.”
Not long ago Bliss listened to an early recording of himself playing the concerto, “and I was very struck by some of the changes. These things might be very subtle developments in my playing or things that I think I’ve got better at. But also just different musical choices”.
He’s never bored by it, “because it’s so well written that even in performance you can find different things to do in terms of musical choices that can really bring it alive. And of course when you work with different musicians, different orchestras, different conductors, that also has a big influence”.
Bliss goes deeper. “You must always stay active in your music making, using your ears and watching, for example, how the strings might shape a phrase compared to how you would normally do it. If you listen out for those things, it then informs your own playing. It becomes then a real dialogue. That’s always an exciting thing to be able to do.”
He has never had regrets about being a prodigy. “I do remember just having the best time as a kid. Nobody ever told me that I should be worried or nervous or apprehensive about it. And so it was always just the most fun thing for me. Quite often I’d get to leave school. Maybe that had something to do with it. I know this isn’t true for some musicians, but being on stage was, I guess, my happy place.”
The Covid times made me at least realise how fortunate I am to have this opportunity. Yes, of course, there are certain schedules where it becomes quite gruelling. But then you get the opportunity to stand on stage in some fantastic places with some fantastic audiences
In a certain sense, musical performers are like athletes who have to stay fit. Clarinettists are athletes of lungs, lips and tongue as well as fingers. “I’d like to think I’m not too much older now, still being 35,” Bliss says. “Those things haven’t really started to take a toll yet. Ask me in another 10 or 15 years: the answer might be different.
“In many ways I almost think I’m just getting started. Of course you say this every time. You feel you’re in a better place than you were five years ago musically, personally, and that you’re playing at a higher level. So, yes, you have to stay in shape. That’s a given.”
Bliss describes himself as “a very self-critical person”, but he comes across as someone who always keeps in touch with positive angles and sees learning opportunities wherever he can.
Unlike a large proportion of successful musicians, he really enjoys travelling. “I love the opportunity to see the world and to be able to do that through music by playing concerts. I try not to take it for granted, though of course it does become your normal. It’s important to take stock and, I guess, realise how fortunate we are to do it.
“The Covid times made me at least realise how fortunate I am to have this opportunity. Yes, of course, there are certain schedules where it becomes quite gruelling. But then you get the opportunity to stand on stage in some fantastic places with some fantastic audiences.
“So for me, it makes it all worthwhile. And to be able to see the world at the same time, that’s quite something. I’d like to think I’m fairly good at having the energy when I need it. And I’ve developed the skill of being able to sleep anywhere at any time.”
The actual playing, of course, is quite distinct from managing a career. “You are running a business. It’s a fact, and I think a lot of musicians don’t learn about that side early enough. It can be quite overwhelming. We have to wear a lot of different hats, on the business side, the administration side, the performing side, rehearsing side. We have to be able to juggle all of these things. It’s a learning curve.
“I was having a very long discussion about this with a friend of mine, another musician, the other day. If you think about all of the people in the world that graduate university with a music degree – whether that’s music education, music performance, whatever – and then you look at the number of jobs or opportunities out there, there are more people than jobs. You have to learn very quickly and you have to have a certain type of personality.”
And Bliss acknowledges the way the reality of the career can be distorted by rose-tinted postings on social media.
While still a teenager the musician became an artist of the wind-instrument company Leblanc, which traces its origins back to 18th-century France. This brought an opportunity to design a new clarinet.
“We thought some of the intermediate-level instruments were not as good as they could have been,” he says. “So we set out to try and design a new instrument that really gave those advancing players a fantastic, professional-level instrument at an affordable price, using computer-automated manufacturing.
“In the very early days my feedback was all very musical, in terms of, ‘I’d like a darker sound,’ or, ‘I’d like the intonation on this note to be lower.’ Which is very frustrating to engineers. Because they’re, like, ‘Just tell me in numbers: do you want this bigger or smaller, or what do you want?’ Fairly quickly I became very interested in the engineering side and really got involved.
“I worked with that company for 18 years. It was a fantastic time and really taught me a lot, as did being part of a very large corporate company, being involved in meetings about the instrument, and the marketing and the branding and the sales, from about the age of 15 or 16. I’m still deeply appreciative of everyone there who was very open and very willing to teach me and listen to my ideas, as young as I was.”
The Julian Bliss Septet, who play at West Wicklow Chamber Music Festival next week, grew out of the idea of “recording some arrangements of Benny Goodman tunes for clarinet and orchestra. I started to go down that rabbit hole in a way I hadn’t done before. And I thought it would be nice to add a rhythm section, and bass would be nice, too. And before I knew it I thought, ‘Okay, how about just starting a band of my own?’ I learned most of it by doing it, which I think is a great way: throw yourself in the deep end.
“I remember the first time actually calling a tune that we hadn’t rehearsed and then thinking, ‘We haven’t talked about how are we going to end this. There’s seven of us on stage: it’s going to be a disaster.’ Of course it was completely fine. It’s interesting how you can communicate what you want without actually saying anything. And then I really embraced that element of not knowing what’s going to happen. I think that’s when the magic really happens.”
Julian Bliss plays with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Swann Van Rechem in Mozart Masterpieces, at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Thursday, May 8th; the Julian Bliss Septet are at the Tramway Theatre, Blessington, on Saturday, May 17th, as part of West Wicklow Chamber Music Festival
