Update Title: 5FECAB63-E914-475A-8A45-AE8A74CC58B7

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American composer Alfred Reed, was born in New York and began his musical studies at
age ten. He served as associate conductor of the 529th Army Air Corps Band in Colorado during
World War II. After the war’s end, in 1946 Reed moved back to New York and attended the
Juilliard School of Music where he studied with composer Vittorio Giannini at the Juilliard
School before becoming a staff composer and arranger for NBC and then ABC. In 1953 he
became the conductor of the Baylor University Symphony Orchestra, where he simultaneously
continued his education, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1955 and his master’s degree in 1956.
It was during this time that the clarinet choir was rising in popularity as an ensemble among
music educators around the United States.
The first original work for clarinet choir and percussion, “Havana Moon” was printed in
1955 and is now a standard in the clarinet choir repertoire. When it was initially published, Reed
remarked that its success was in large part to the developments made in the low-register clarinet
family members at the time. The composer revealed in his score the following regarding the
bourgeoning repertoire for clarinet choir:
With the development of the B-flat Contra-Bass Clarinet, as well as the improvement of
the E-flat Alto and B-flat Bass Clarinets by the G. LeBlanc Instrument Corporation, the
Fully Balanced Clarinet Choir, at last, becomes a practical reality We now have the pure,
basic tone for the Band as a complete section in itself, capable of being detached from the
Orchestra as a whole, and playing its own literature. The publication of the Caribbean
Suite for clarinet choir marks the first step in the development of a literature for the Band
that small stand in the same relationship to it as the String Orchestra literature to the
symphonic Orchestra. - The President's Own (Marine Clarinet Choir), 8/12/2020.

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