Mandat, an SIUC professor of music, can turn the clarinet sideways, like a flute, and play the instrument by blowing into one of the finger-holes. Clarinetist Eric Mandat produces music without using a mouthpiece. Sometimes Mandat plays music by playing one note on the clarinet and simultaneously singing another. With circular breathing, air is exhaled out of the mouth and inhaled through the nose. Mandat may be best known throughout the hemisphere, however, for his ability to produce quarter-tones.
Black keys represent half tones.
Producing quarter-tones involves a different way of using one's fingers than what clarinetists are taught. Mandat's quarter-tone fingering techniques have started to appear in textbooks. Web searches turn up correspondence among clarinetists who can't figure out a particular technique or how Eric Mandat makes it look so easy. Mandat says he knew by age 3 that he wanted to play the clarinet, although he didn't get the opportunity until he signed up for school band at age 8. A year later he began private lessons with a member of the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra.