Junior Joseph Clarke, a French horn player in the Clarke Central High School band, practices before school on Nov. 16. Clarke has been selected to play at Carnegie Hall in February as part of the High School Honors Performance Series. “This is an incredibly important performance to me. This is like the biggest performance of my life,” Clarke said. Photo by Julie Alpaugh.
By VALERIA GARCIA-POZO – News Editor
Junior Joseph Clarke was accepted to participate in the High School Honors Performance Series, which allots him the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
From Feb. 2 to Feb. 6, junior Joseph Clarke will participate in the High School Honors Performance Series, an international organization that recognizes talented student musicians and provides them with the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Clarke came across the opportunity as a result of his involvement in the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) All-National Symphony Orchestra, which he pursued following his participation in the Georgia All-State Band.
“I’ve gotten emails from colleges and conservatories around the country, which is mind-blowing to me, but the Carnegie performances — I didn’t even know that it existed,” Clarke said. “They actually sent me an email and said, ‘Hey, you made this All-National Orchestra. We think it’d be a good idea if you sent in an application for our program,’ and I thought — Carnegie Hall? Whoa. So I decided to go ahead and send in an application.”
According to fine arts department co-chair and director of bands Dr. Robert Lawrence, Clarke’s accomplishments are the result of an investment of hard work and dedication.
“He takes challenges that he wants to have and he works at them. Everything that he thinks he lacks in natural talent, he works to achieve and to gain that expertise by practicing. He’s a practice-holic, and I mean that,” Lawrence said.
In order to be considered for the program, Clarke had to prepare a recording of a specific etude and fill out an
application form. He also added an additional supplement to his application.
“Everyone had the option of including an extra two minutes of material of anything they wanted, and I played a couple of orchestral excerpts that I had been working on in my lessons with my horn teacher for the past couple weeks,” Clarke said.
According to Clarke, private instruction from his horn teacher, University of Georgia French horn professor Dr. Jean Martin-Williams, has been particularly beneficial in preparing him to perform at advanced levels.
“She’s been a major, major influence on not just my horn playing or as a musician, but really on my life,” Clarke said. “I can basically attribute most of my progress as a musician the last two years I’ve been taking lessons to her. I am incredibly grateful for her teaching. She’s basically gotten me into All-State and All-National Orchestra and Carnegie Hall and all that.”
Junior and band member Samuel Ivy has studied with Clarke since their freshman year, and expresses pride in his level of commitment.
“It’s really exciting to know that somebody from Clarke Central and somebody from somewhere I know has the ability to go and play somewhere on an international scale,” Ivy said. “He’s very dedicated.”
Clarke’s peers’ recognition of his dedication has led to an increase in band members’ interest in auditioning for All-State and pursuing band-related activities outside of the program itself.
“I remember when I made All-State a lot of kids saw that — I noticed this — and a lot of kids saw that and decided, ‘You know what? I’m going to start practicing, too,’ and you know, this year, we’ve got like 25 kids auditioning. Last year, we had like seven. So I think that’s really cool that I made a lot of kids wanna start working hard and wanna audition for All-State,” Clarke said.
Clarke hopes to pursue a career in music performance in the future and to take the opportunities he has been presented with now to work towards new ones.
“Hopefully, I’ll go on to even bigger, better things than this, I guess. That’s what I wanna do. It’s gonna be tough, but that’s sort of what I’ve decided I wanna do, ’cause playing the French horn and playing in orchestras has basically become my favorite activity,” Clarke said.
