Harry Sparnaay

Harry Sparnaay (14 April 1944, Amsterdam – 12 December 2017, Lloret de Mar, Girona, Spain) was a noted Dutch bass clarinetist, composer, and teacher.

Other festivals at which Harry Sparnaay has performed include Witten, Aarhus, Como, Bolzano, Naples, Torino, Bourges, Middelburg, Graz, Salzburg, Huddersfield, Saarbrücken, Royan, Houston and many others.

More than 650 pieces have been written for him by composers such as Jorge Antunes, Claudio Ambrosini, Luciano Berio, Gerard Brophy, Philip Czaplowski,[1] Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Franco Donatoni, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Mary Finsterer, Andrew Ford, Jonathan Harvey, Maki Ishii, Sukhi Kang, Tristan Keuris, Mark Kopytman, Helmut Lachenmann, Ton de Leeuw, Theo Loevendie, Roderik de Man, Takayuki Rai, Michael Smetanin, Gérard Grisey, Maurice Weddington, Iannis Xenakis, Isang Yun and many others.

As the conductor of the ensemble for New Music he conducted compositions by Arnold Schoenberg (Pierrot Lunaire and Serenade), Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Olivier Messiaen, Theo Loevendie, Franco Donatoni, Ross Harris, Joe Cutler, Toshio Hosokawa, Mary Finsterer, and Iannis Xenakis, and during the International Gaudeamus Music Week he conducted the ensemble in pieces by the youngest generation.

In 30 years Sparnaay was professor of musicians who came from all over the world, a selection per country of origin: Austria: Petra Stump-Linshalm Germany: Tobias Klein, Lothar Ohlmeier Mexico: Fernando Dominguez Netherlands: Jelte Althuis, Henri Bok, Jacques Dubois, Fie Schouten Switzerland: Ernesto Molinari Turkey: Oguz Büyükberber UK: Sarah Watts USA: Laura Carmichael, Lori Freedman, Michael Lowenstern Remembering Sparnaay[2] https://clarinet.org/remembering-harry-sparnaay/