He swayed sideways as he felt the music, and his eyebrows mapped its skipping path. The audience, riveted, strained to see who was playing. I wasn't thinking about the weather or about anyone in the audience. It's kind of like that.
Athletes do it.
It's the zone. It's the same thing with that solo. Last year, barely out of his teens, he won the CSO associate principal clarinet job, beating 70 to 80 clarinetists who auditioned. And that was before he graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. When he performs with the CSO in Carnegie Hall Monday, it will not be his first time playing on that fabled stage.