Umesh Shankar's Recordings Page

Intro

I'm a clarinetist. Until the Spring of 2006, I was principal clarinetist of the UC Berkeley Symphony and I studied with Carey Bell, principal clarinetist of the San Francisco Opera. I previously studied with Scott Anderson (Honolulu Symphony), Thomas Hill (Boston Philharmonic/New England Conservatory), and Reesa Gringorten (New Haven Symphony and Orchestra New England) in reverse chronological order.
Now that I've finished my Ph.D., I have a real job at Google and I'm playing only recreationally. Maybe soon I'll play more. We'll see.

The following are recordings (mostly that I've made) of myself and others. My equipment and facilities are modest (see the equipment section below for details). These are live recordings with the attendant uncertainties. Still, questions and comments are welcome.

• You may listen to them and and distribute them as you wish without modification and with proper attribution. You may not modify or sell them in any form without permission. (Although if for some reason you want to, let me know.)

Contents (in chronological order):

• Woodwind.org (formerly Sneezy.org) contest 2001
• Debussy Rhapsodie 22-Oct-2001
• Brass Quintets
• UCB Concert 20-Feb-2002 (Schumann Fantasiestücke/Brahms Trio)
• UCB Concert 17-Sep-2003 (Mozart Clarinet Quintet)
• UCB Concert 14-Apr-2004 (Ravel Habanera/Poulenc Clarinet Sonata and "Babar")
• Mozart Clarinet Concerto 22-Mar-2006 (with the UC Symphony)
  
• NEW Mozart Clarinet Concerto 09-Apr-2006 (with the UC Symphony)
  
• Equipment used to make (some of the) recordings

The equipment used in recordings I made was:

• Sony MZ-R70 portable minidisc recorder. A decent unit; setting manual recording levels is a bit irritating. The analog output is not well-suited for high-quality output to anything but headphones. From what I gather, Sharp's portable MD recorders are better for in-the-field recording with better preamps and easier recording level adjustment.
  
• Core Sound's Binaural microphones. These are tiny, but sound quite good.
• Sony MDS-JB940 Minidisc deck. This is used for titling, minor editing, listening (the DAC and headphone amps are excellent), and most importantly, digital output to the
• Echo Mia 24-bit/96khz soundcard. It can make bit perfect recordings from digital sources (the minidisc deck). I strongly recommend getting a good card like this instead of using your Soundblaster or whatever. The Soundblaster is fine for games.
• Syntrillium Software's Cool Edit 2000 with various plugins. At $69, this is a great value. I highly recommend the Audio Cleanup plugin also. The program is a very intuitive audio editor and can generate high-quality MP3s as well.