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Clarinet World Records

Music is a competitive field, especially if you’re trying to set or break a world record!

Here are a few clarinet world records (official and unofficial):

  • Guinness World Record for longest career as a clarinetist. Stanley Drucker received this award for performing with the New York Philharmonic for 62 years!
  • Guinness World Record for largest clarinet ensemble. The largest clarinet ensemble took place on July 26, 2019 when 367 clarinetists performed at the International Clarinet Association ClarinetFest in Knoxville, Tennessee.
  • Largest carrot clarinet ensemble. On April 10, 2016, an ensemble comprised of 275 carrot clarinets played at the Nederlands Klarinet Festival in Amsterdam. You can watch Linsey Pollak’s video of part of the performance here.
  • Largest clarinet mouthpiece. According to the July/August 1993 issue of the International Clarinet Association journal The Clarinet (Volume 20, issue 4, page 10), Oberlin double-major student Susan Barnes (studio art and clarinet) created a mouthpiece standing at 5’8”. “Barnes created the work last semester for an introductory sculpture class and gave it to her teacher Lawrence McDonald, Oberlin professor of clarinet.”
  • Longest note. This isn’t clarinet specific, but Kenny G previously held the record for this (over 45 minutes) until others broke his record in recent years.
  • Longest Time Playing Clarinet While Hanging Upside Down From A Tree Branch and Longest Time Playing A Clarinet While Upside Down. These were found on Record Setter’s website, although there are no official guidelines for these records.

Do you think you can beat any of these records? What clarinet world record do you hope to set one day?

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