Anthony McGill (Joseph Fuqua photo) | ZOOM |

        On an October evening in Music Hall, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was performing the final movement — “Dream of a Witches' Sabbath” — of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

        Suddenly, from the middle of the wind section, Anthony McGill began to play a piercing, weird dance tune on his E-flat clarinet — the grotesque idee fixe conjuring images of ghosts, sorcerers and devilish orgies. He swayed sideways as he felt the music, and his eyebrows mapped its skipping path. The audience, riveted, strained to see who was playing.

        “I wasn't thinking about the weather or about anyone in the audience. When that clarinet goes into my mouth, I'm thinking about playing,” Mr. McGill says. “You know the Nike commercials — "Just do it?' It's kind of like that. Athletes do it. It's the zone. It's the same thing with that solo.”

        Mr. McGill, 21, the newest member of the CSO, was relaxing over lunch at Nicola's in Over-the-Rhine, looking back at an incredible run. Last year, barely out of his teens, he won the CSO associate principal clarinet job, beating 70 to 80 clarinetists who auditioned. And that was before he graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Back in Carnegie Hall

               When he performs with the CSO in Carnegie Hall Monday, it will not be his first time playing on that fabled stage. He has already been there with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Music from Marlboro and the New York String Orchestra. Then on Saturday, he will head to Europe with the orchestra on its eight-city tour.

        In May, he became the sixth clarinetist in history to win an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a $15,000 prize recognizing immensely talented instrumentalists. Last month, he performed a solo recital in the Ravinia Festival's Rising Star Series, outside of Chicago.

        “For a clarinetist to get a position right out of school of the quality he got is extremely rare,” says Robert Fitzpatrick, dean of the Curtis Institute of Music. “Frankly, good clarinetists are a dime a dozen, so it takes something to rise above the crowd.”

        “He has a rare package of tremendous playing skills and great ears — and then, a wonderful way with people” says New York French hornist David Jolley, 52, who has performed with Mr. McGill at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.

        ""I've heard him play the pants off his instrument. ... I couldn't believe how he mastered all the different elements. It was extremely striking to the audience, a vivid performance.”
       

A special program

               Being good takes hard work. For Mr. McGill, it took practicing five hours a day in high school. It meant never going to a music lesson unprepared.

        Growing up in the Chatham area of Chicago's South Side, Mr. McGill might never have known he had such talent — had it not been for a special music program for kids and its director.

        “Without any music in the schools, and how expensive music instruction is, even a lovely middle-class family like the McGills couldn't have afforded the kind of instruction (their sons) required,” says Alice Pfaelzer, co-founder of Chicago's Merit Music Program.

        She helped start the tuition-free conservatory for minority, disadvantaged or extraordinarily gifted kids in 1979, when Chicago's public schools began erasing music from the curriculum. She was its executive director until she retired eight years ago. The first year, 150 students received a full menu of lessons and music classes. Today more than 4,000 kids participate.

        Anthony's older brother, Demarre, now principal flutist of the Florida Orchestra, was the first family member to pick up a musical instrument. Mr. McGill remembers the day in fourth grade, when Merit Music Program teachers came to his school and spread out musical instruments on a table.

        “I wanted to play a saxophone, but it was too big for me,” the slightly built musician says laughing. “So I picked the clarinet. My dad was there, and he's like, OK we can do this. We went to a music store and rented the clarinet.

        “It was a gradual process. I didn't wake up one day and go, "Eureka! I've got it.' But from the start, I felt like I really liked it.”

        But a career? “That came quite a bit later,” he says. “I knew that I loved it, but for a long time, I wanted to be a lawyer.”
       

Chills up his spine

               An honors student, he graduated at age 16 from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

        His parents were not musical, but exposed their sons to “everything possible” from music to tae kwon do. His mother, Ira McGill, is a dance therapist, art teacher, and has now started acting. Demarre McGill (Sr.), a former art teacher, is a fire chief in the Chicago fire department.

        His earliest role model was his brother, who is four years older and would rise at 6 a.m. to practice his flute before school.

        “He was obsessed. I realized there was some kind of passion behind it,” Mr. McGill says.

        Mr. McGill thrived in the Merit Music Program, which awarded him scholarships to Interlochen's eight-week summer arts camp when he was 11.

        “I was principal clarinet of the intermediate orchestra, and I thought, maybe this is something I'm decent at. It's the first time I ever got those chills running down my back,” he says.

        When he was 12, his clarinet teacher came to Mrs. Pfaelzer and said Anthony had learned everything the teacher could offer.

        “I called the principal clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony, Larry Combs, and asked him if he would hear Anthony,” says Mrs. Pfaelzer, who arranged an audition and drove him to it. “He played a little bit of the Copland Clarinet Concerto, and Larry was blown away. He said, "I've got to teach this kid,”' she recalls.

        By the time Mr. McGill was ready to graduate from high school, his brother Demarre was already studying at Curtis. He decided to audition for the competitive music school, which accepts only a few students each year, and where each of its 165 students is on full scholarship. Among its graduates are violinists Leila Josefowicz and Hilary Hahn, cellist Lynn Harrell, and many CSO musicians — including CSO principal clarinetist Richard Hawley.

        “When I heard him play, I saw that he has natural gifts for music and a natural agility for the clarinet,” says Donald Montanaro, the teacher of Mr. McGill and Mr. Hawley. “The other thing that I always look for is intelligence. ... From the outset I have felt he had all those gifts.”
       

Tough competition

               Curtis is one of the few schools that cultivates a specific style of wind playing, as well as the plush string sound identified with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Many of its teachers are also members of the orchestra.

        The CSO and other orchestras are attracted to that sound; consequently a high percentage of Curtis graduates populate American orchestras. Each of Mr. Montanaro's students of the last 20 years is playing in a major orchestra. Many, like Mr. Hawley, are principal (first chair) players.

        “Anthony's playing is a good example of what I try to teach,” Mr. Montanaro says. “I like a bel canto — singing — style on the clarinet. I concentrate on expressiveness, tone quality, smooth playing and homogeneity of sound.”

        Besides that, he says, “he's a wonderful person. I don't think I ever heard him say a bad word about anyone....He's just very likable.”

        Mr. McGill had the right schooling, and the right stuff. But he knew how competitive it would be to get a job. Orchestras use just four clarinets. Hundreds apply for each opening.

        “There are stories where principal players have taken 20, 30 or 40 auditions before they land at one job,” Mr. McGill says. “It's all about persistence and hard work. It's never, never giving up.”

        He could not believe it when he won the CSO spot, in his fourth try for an orchestra job.

        “I couldn't stand up. I had to sit down. That's the first time that has happened to me, where I physically was off-balance for a second,” he says.

        In November, Mrs. Pfaelzer came to Cincinnati to see him perform with the CSO.

        “He was there in his white tie and tails, and I just burst into tears,” she says. “I was very proud.”

        As he gets to know Cincinnati and the CSO, Mr. McGill plans to “take one thing at a time, one concert at a time, one opportunity at a time and just try to do the best possible job that I can do,” he says.

        “I will never lose that love for it. I'll just continue playing, and let it take me where it can take me.”
       

McGILL FILE

        • Occupation: Associate principal clarinetist, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

        • Born: Chicago, July 17, 1979.

        • Lives: Downtown Cincinnati.

        • Marital status: Single. “If I was still in college, I'd probably have a girlfriend.”

        • First inspiration: “I had three CDs of (clarinetist and former Cincinnatian) Richard Stoltzman, and I would listen to them constantly.”

        • On winning the CSO job: “Because I know how ridiculously difficult it is, that was a big, life-changing event in many ways.”

        • Listens to: “More and more, I'm listening to a lot of classical music. It used to be a mixture of 70 percent classical, 30 percent pop and hip-hop dance music.”

        • In his free time: “I used to play basketball. Now it's too cold and I don't know where to play. I practice (clarinet), surf the 'Net, watch TV, and I like to go dancing. Recently I've gotten experimental with cooking. I've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network, and I attempted to make his chicken soup, but I ended up improvising.”

        • On his first recording session with the CSO in October: “That was intense. It was nerve-wracking. ... (Maestro) Paavo Jarvi was interesting. I felt that he wanted more time. In situations like that, you don't get very much time at all. It can be frustrating, because you want the best possible product, and you have a short time to do it. It was definitely a learning experience. It was just wild.”

        • Best lesson he ever learned: “I had a big memory slip” in an audition to play a concerto with the Chicago Youth Symphony at age 11.

        “It was a devastating experience for me. From that point on, I realized that, hey, it's not always about playing perfectly. You can practice your butt off, and still sometimes miss something. You have to sit down and think about what you're doing this for. ... I learned that I actually had to practice more.”

        • On handling the pressure: “You don't ever ever think about it while you're playing. Because the second I think about it, I'll have that memory slip like I did when I was 11 years old!”

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