Bare Necessities (Terry Gilkyson)

3 clarinets, bass clarinet

This song is totally awesome. I don't remember how it ended up being sung at the summer program I went to before senior year of high school, but it is just really cool. The intro is beautiful, and the rest of the instrumental parts are masterful. This is the kind of stuff you don't always notice in Disney music, but back however many years ago it was, it was really good. Even the solos are amazing. So I figured I'd arrange it for my clarinet quartet as a crowd pleaser -- though we never did perform, but still. The bass clarinet is instructed to ad lib, which can only be approximated by grace notes and odd rhythms, so the recording isn't perfect. And "Oh, man, this is really livin'!" is supposed to be spoken, but it's not there. Oh, well. The bass clarinet has the solo most of the time, but during the instrumental section, the other three clarinets each get a solo. There was nothing special about the second solo -- the piano solo -- that would be interesting to reproduce on clarinets, so I replaced it, though I won't tell you with what. ;p

Listen to Bare Necessities (right-click to download)