Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens celebrates America

Star performer appearing in July 6
Rappahannock County concert

Doreen Ketchens thrilled the audience at last July’s salute to America concert, and this year, the New Orleans’ clarinet virtuoso seems equally thrilled to be invited to Little Washington for an encore at the July 6 concert that is becoming a Rappahannock County tradition.

“This is so cool, so awesome. Washington is my garden of culture!” she enthused. 

The invitation came from Col. John R. Bourgeois, director emeritus of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, who retired here and now leads the annual Bourgeois Concert Band’s tribute to America at Avon Hall.

The colonel is from New Orleans. “So, of course, I knew about Doreen and I wanted her to perform for Rappahannock County,” said Bourgeois, who introduced the clarinetist at last year’s concert. “She’s such a gentle spirit, such a wonderful person. I have jazz in my soul. Jazz is my favorite music and Doreen Ketchens is the essence of jazz.”

That essence was showcased at Wolf Trap on May 31 when Ketchens came north to play at the national park for the performing arts with the United States Marine Band to kickoff Wolf Trap’s summer events. 

“She had  an incredible reception from the audience,” Bourgeois said. “Not only did she earn a standing ovation but they whooped, hollered, stomped and whistled, sounding more like fans at a rock concert.”

The enthusiastic reception was no surprise.

Ketchens, 57, is a singularly spectacular musical artist shaped from an original mold all her own. “I raise my clarinet to the sky, to the sun and just express myself,” she said.  

Classically trained at colleges and conservatories, she has performed for four U.S. presidents and with symphony orchestras in settings from great cathedrals and concert halls to festivals in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Canada and Russia. She sets toes tapping and fingers snapping when she drives that syncopated rhythm in clubs, bars and cabarets. 

She’s also street schooled as a busker, and in T-shirts and blue jeans, she’s ruled for three decades as “Queen Louis,” sending notes up into the stratosphere as the leader of the band on the corner of Royal Street in the city that never sleeps. 

Playing with emotion that can transmit feelings from rapturous joy to deep sadness, she infuses the familiar clarinet staccato with vibrato and growl. Whether  with a full symphony orchestra or her jazz band, Ketchens plays with the same fierce intensity, lost in the music as she sways and bobs with the rhythm. 

See Ketchens perform on July 6

What: Celebrate America Concert

When: Saturday, July 6 at 6 p.m. (Grounds open 4 p.m.)

Where: Avon Hall, 22 Avon Lane, Washington, Virginia

Gift of serendipity

Despite the jazz funerals and second lines parading weekly past her family home, music was not always part of her life, much less a lifelong ambition. That didn’t start until fifth grade — with a history test. 

Eleven-year-old Ketchens, a top student at Joseph Craig Elementary School, was surprised by a pop quiz and flummoxed at the outset when she didn’t know the answer to the first question. Before she got to the second, the principal’s voice crackled over the public address system:

“Anyone who wants to try out for the new school band should report immediately to the band room.” 

She was out of that desk and down the hall in a flash.

Back then, she recalled, “boys played certain instruments and girls played certain instruments.” A  poster of a flute, one of the instruments played by young ladies, was the first thing she saw in the band room. 

“I thought that’s what I’d do – the flute!” But girls ahead of her chose all the available flutes so she settled on the instrument pictured in the second poster, even though she couldn’t identify it. “It was pretty,” she said. 

The horn in the photograph was a clarinet. It was a perfect match.

Ketchens practiced hard, and a prodigious talent emerged. The budding musical prodigy was recognized with scholarships from Louisiana’s arts conservatory, Delgado Community College, Loyola University, Southern University, the University of Hartford and the New York Philharmonic. That all was capped by an internship with the City of Hartford’s symphony orchestra.

Back home in Tremé, America’s oldest African American community famed for jazz clubs, soul food restaurants and cultural centers, Ketchen’s family had a neighborhood store where she took a regular turn behind the counter, starting when she was seven. 

One of her weekly customers was Lawrence Ketchens, two years older, whose aunt lived around the corner. The two kids were sworn enemies, or at least they acted that way, always needling, teasing and poking fun. “We HATED each other,” Doreen recalled, shaking her head at the memory. 

But it was an harmonic convergence when they reconnected years later at Loyola University. They fell in love. 

Love’s course didn’t always run smoothly. When their Loyola scholarships lagged behind tuition increases, they applied to different schools, seeking better deals. Doreen and her clarinet ended up at the University of Hartford in Connecticut and Lawrence with his sousaphone at Xavier University in Cincinnati. 

Then his car was stolen, and with no transportation, he dropped out of school for a job. Two months later, his dad died. A month and a day later, Doreen’s father died. Both sets of parents had been in long and loving relationships, and now their mothers were alone. 

“Our moms needed help,” Doreen said. “We were young, and we had plenty of time to chase our dreams, so we left school and packed up for New Orleans.”

They sold food plates as “Doreen’s Sweets” from the family store in Tremé, often working from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. They had both supplemented their Loyola scholarships, Doreen as a chef, cooking the NOLA soul food she’d grown up with, and Lawrence as a painter and carpenter.

 “We made good money in the Midwest but in New Orleans, painters were a dime a dozen and chefs a penny a dozen,” Doreen said. They counted it a good day when they cleared $50, and by conventional standards, they were poor. Then one night walking through the French Quarter, Lawrence watched the tourists dropping dollars into the collection buckets of street musicians. 

“We could do that,” he told Doreen. 

“Are you crazy?” she countered. “I went to college.”

Business of busking

But “love makes you do crazy things,” she said. “I agreed to try, and it turned into so much more than a street gig. We connected musically. We’d been together in orchestras and bands, but separated, sitting far away from each other. Now it was just the two of us, making good music and Lawrence teaching me jazz.”

It was also a “humbling experience” for Doreen. “I was really good at classical, I was used to sounding really good all the time, and now I didn’t,” she said.

After years of classical music’s structure and control, she was unsettled by the improvisational heart of jazz. “Jazz felt nuts. And out on the street, I was so exposed. It was humiliating and tiresome. It was learning the hard way,” she said.

“But Lawrence was so good, so patient, so supportive, and he pampered and instructed me in such a loving way. Plus, he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, and all I wanted to do was be around him,” she said, beaming a dazzling smile. 

“Just play the melody, then enhance the melody,” she remembers Lawrence advising. She improved with every improv, every note sent soaring and held.

(Those impressively long and high notes are easier than they sound, Doreen confided. It’s the low notes that drain the air. Plus, the audience spontaneously applauds the high holds, and while they’re clapping, she can sneak in a breath. “And I could hold my breath longer than anybody else in school,” she said.)

Doreen didn’t sing at the outset, but listeners began offering an extra $10 if she would add words to their favorite tunes. She obliged, and another talent was discovered. Her soulful voice was untrained, but it was melodic, smooth and powerful with a little growl that echoed the rolling growl of her clarinet. And with  the distinctive phrasing and intonation of New Orleans, she captured the spirit of the city.

Stolen from a pro

Lawrence was touring Europe with a band soon after Doreen found her voice. Determined to have a surprise for him when he returned, she “apprenticed” with Pud Brown, a longtime friend and renowned jazz reed player. 

Brown had been raised in a circus. He could play every instrument, and he thought there was nothing he couldn’t do – even his own dental work with epoxy and super glue, Doreen said with a laugh. 

“He advised me to find someone I really liked doing something they really liked, and then to steal it,” she said. “He put me in a chair beside him on stage and ordered, ‘Just listen. Learn note by note, then add your own touches, and you’ll sound like a pro because you stole it from a pro.’”

Doreen shadowed Brown until she owned every note of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Jazz in “Nawlins” was then very much a men’s-only game in a misogynistic, racist city, she explained, so she chose “safe clubs” for practice, inquiring if she could sit in, suggesting “Sweet Georgia” when asked what she’d like to play, impressing her fellow musicians and bowing out if invited to play more. 

“It opened the door for me in my own brain and gave me confidence,” she said. 

When Lawrence returned from touring, she played “Sweet Georgia Brown” for him. Her favorite musician’s response was “WOW!” She proved she was now a master of classical musical theory and improvisation, and she now had twin passions, with the second being jazz. 

Ask Doreen to identify her big break, and she answers, “I’m still getting them. It’s more of a ladder, a stair climb. We’ve had breaks, we’re doing well. But we still need to work, and we’ve got to keep our chops up, playing and performing.” 

Hence the street concerts in the French Quarter. Besides, she loves the setting, the close connection with her bandmates and the interaction with her listeners. 

“It’s all good, and it’s all God,” she said. “The emotion, the passion, the patience, the hardship, the success, the happiness and the love. We took risks, but it’s much easier to take risks when you’re doing it with someone you love, with a partner, and you’re doing it out of love.”