Eric Schultz, an assistant professor of music at Coastal Carolina University, will perform Scott McAllister’s Black Dog on Thursday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. in Wheelwright Auditorium as part of the CCU Wind Ensemble concert titled, “MELTED.” McAllister is an American composer and clarinetist who teaches at Baylor University. Black Dog is a concerto feature for the clarinet.

“Inspired by the 1971 rock tune of the same name, the clarinet is pushed to the extreme, often taking the role of lead singer or face-melting guitar soloist,” said Schultz. “In addition to Led Zeppelin, the eclectic work also pulls references from Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic rock, hymns, and classical composers such as Claude Debussy and Carl Maria von Weber, who wrote for the clarinet.”

Schultz will make history as the first to perform the work with an original solo cadenza and innovative use of live effects processing through the software Ableton Live to recreate distortion and other guitar pedal effects in real-time. By installing a contact microphone, also known as a piezo microphone, directly into the barrel of his clarinet, the air vibrations in the instrument are converted to electricity at the source, which allows the clarinet to be plugged directly into an audio interface, just like an electric guitar.

As founder of the [Represent]atoire Project, a play on the words repertoire and representation, Schultz is a fierce advocate for new music whose unique voice on the clarinet has inspired many of today’s finest composers. His project advocates for including a diversity of composers in collegiate music curricula and repertoire lists by intensely focusing on living composers.

Click here to see a preview of the performance.