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In conversation, clarinetist Anthony McGill is thoughtful, cordial, never effusive. Slowly, he begins to tell stories, good ones, and gets comfortable — as in his performances, which are unassumingly magnetic, setting a listener at ease. He is as comfortable a virtuoso as you will hear, his sound fluid and pure-toned, smoky or silk-soft, as mysterious as a distant radio signal or as emphatic as a whack.
"At a certain point, your sound becomes you, and you become your sound," says McGill, 30, whom you may have seen on television last Jan. 20 — you and about a billion other people — when McGill performed in near-Arctic conditions at President Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington, D.C. Even Benny
Nearly a year later, "dreamlike" and "shocking" still are among the adjectives he chooses to describe his invitation to the event. ("Unbelievably cold" also figures in his recollections of the day, and, no, he never met President Obama.)
But that career-maker of a day doesn't really explain why McGill's recital next Sunday in Atherton — he will perform in an all-star trio, helping to inaugurate a new concert hall at Menlo-Atherton High School — has been sold out for weeks. That is because Bay Area audiences, and Peninsula audiences in particular, are hooked on his
Since the summer festival's emergence that year, he has returned again and again — and local audiences have grown proprietary, charting his career (he was appointed principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in 2004, at age 25) while enjoying his team play and mastery of repertory. His memorable Menlo performances have ranged from Carl Maria von Weber's Grosses Quintett (Grand Quintet) for Clarinet and Strings (those forest-deep notes; those fleet cross-register leaps) to Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (those mysterious radio signals).
"Anthony's very beautiful way of making music entrances people," says cellist David Finckel, who, along with pianist Wu Han, will perform with McGill in Atherton. (Finckel and Wu Han are founders and artistic directors of the Menlo festival, which is presenting the recital.) "He has a gorgeous sound, which lends itself to standing out in solo roles and also blending in an ensemble. He also has incredible ...in ensemble work. He has infallible rhythm...., beautiful pitch.
"Plus, he's just an inspired presence," Finckel says. "Two summers ago, we had a day of open rehearsals ... and the line to get in and hear Anthony was 'round the building, and the lines were nowhere else."
The clarinetist's sound sticks with people. In 2001, cellist Yo-Yo Ma played with McGill, then only 21, in Japan. They performed one time — the piece was "Quartet for the End of Time" — and never spoke again. Until last December, when McGill woke up one morning in his New York apartment, checked his cell phone and found a message from Ma's manager: "I want you to do a concert."
The "concert" was President Obama's inauguration. McGill's family and girlfriend sat within waving distance as McGill, Ma & Co. performed composer John Williams' "Air and Simple Gifts." (And the group did perform the piece, although the audience, worldwide and on the National Mall, heard the group's prerecorded version. It was just too cold to risk snapped strings and other weather-induced disasters with a purely "live" rendition.)
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, the son of public school art teachers, McGill owes everything to his parents, to hear him tell it.
"My parents — they're just the best," he says. "They've always been super-supportive. They've always liked how I play — they weren't lying, but, even as a kid, they would always compliment me on how expressive I was. They're artists, and they relate to music in a very feel sort of way."
There was a family art room in the house, growing up. His father, Demarre McGill, and mother, Ira Carol McGill, collected African art. They painted in oils at home, constantly, when Anthony and his older brother, also Demarre — and now principal flute with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra — were children.
During a public school strike one year, Demarre senior decided it was time for a career switch. He joined the Chicago Fire Department (he eventually retired as a deputy commissioner), and while moving up through the ranks, he was "always taking (civil service) tests," Anthony says, "and working really hard."
"I remember him days on end, just studying ... constantly. This is something that I think we saw constantly growing up. And my brother became really passionate about the flute, practicing obsessively. By the time I came along, everyone was involved with something, constantly. There was a lot of possibility in our house: The sky's the limit."
And a lot of music, too: Michael Jackson and Al Green. "And my mom, who's also a dancer and an actress, would listen to classical music and musicals — there was definitely a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber going around. And my mom would sing along with whatever it was."
At age 9, Anthony picked up the clarinet. He made steady progress, in large part because of the Merit School of Music, a community program with a mission to fill the gap in music education in public schools.
At age 12, he joined the Chicago Youth Symphony — one of its few African-American members: "I knew I was different: 'Oh, you're from the South Side!' But it wasn't a huge issue; at least I didn't make it into one."
When he was 15, his parents took out a second mortgage on the house to cover his tuition at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. From there, at age 17 in 1996, it was on to the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, and from there — beating out 80 competitors, though McGill doesn't mention it — to his appointment, in 2000, at age 21, as associate principal clarinet in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
But "you don't sense a lot of competitiveness in Anthony," says Richard Waller, who retired as that orchestra's principal clarinet in 1994 and has closely followed McGill's career. "There really is none of that in him. Because he is so comfortable with himself, that's the way his playing sounds."
These days, aside from a steady diet of performances at the Met, and aside from his own solo performances with orchestras around the country, McGill also spends time hanging out in New York jazz clubs. He played in a small, backup orchestra for jazz singer Diana Krall at Carnegie Hall last June — he Twittered about it — and recently has played a few gigs with friends in an indie rock band at Brooklyn night spots.
His goals include widening his mentoring of children in the Merit School of Music and other outreach programs — to pass along his own healthy "addiction" to the arts, which, he says, "can be spread." Maybe some of those children will be turned on by McGill's first CD, with music by Debussy, Poulenc and Gershwin, and due out soon via his Web site (www.anthonymcgill.com).
His parents recently gave it a spin. "My dad said, 'This is great. The only problem is, now we're going to be up all night, listening.' I don't even know if they realize how, to this day, it still means so much to me that they like what I'm doing. And they tell me all the time. I guess I'm like a little kid like that, still."
Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069.
