Music Education Monday: Paquito D'Rivera on composing and playing clarinet, and more

Born in 1948 in Cuba, Paquito D'Rivera first became well-known in the USA in the early 1980s as the fiery alto saxophonist for the high-energy band Irakere.

Over the ensuing decades, he's revealed other aspects of his musical personality, too - such as his clarinet playing, which has been consistently good enough to earn D'Rivera (pictured) a place in the critical conversation about the most capable contemporary jazz clarinetists.

For today's Music Education Monday, here's a video of a master class with D'Rivera, recorded in 2012 at an event sponsored by the reed manufacturer Van Doren, in which he discusses clarinet playing and composing. You can see the video in the embedded window at the bottom of this post.

* Also of interest to music students: Jazz Times and ArtistWorks are offering readers a chance to win a year's worth of free online music lessons from one of ArtistWorks' teachers. The company's roster of instructors includes guitarists Chuck Loeb, Martin Taylor, and Andreas Oberg, bassist John Patitucci, saxophonist Eric Marienthal, and pianist George Whitty. You can enter the drawing for the free lessons here.