June 12, 2023
By: Bill Conger
An 18-year-old DeKalb County girl is the top clarinet player in the state of Tennessee. Warren County High School graduate Kelsa Rice, the daughter of Jason and Alisa Rice, was ranked the number one B-flat clarinetist after facing stiff competition.
Earlier in the year the talented teen had made second chair at the Mid-State competition for both B-flat Clarinet and Bass Clarinet before squaring off against musicians in the east and west division of the state.
“With B flat Clarinet, you have 180 audition from each region, and then you’re going against 9 people from each region put together where with Bass Clarinet, you’re only going against six [people] period,” Rice explained in a radio interview with WJLE. “That was a very stressful situation for auditions. They had to push the result date back a couple of days, and we were all on edge because we didn’t end up getting the results until the Monday of the week we were supposed to go there. So, it was a very nerve-wracking couple of days because they were supposed to come out the Wednesday before. It was just a terrible waiting period.”
She performed with the All-State Band the last weekend in April.
“We played some really amazing music,” she said. “It was a phenomenal experience.”
Rice first started band her sixth-grade year.
“I had never picked up a wind instrument,” Rice recalls. “I played a little bit of guitar with my father, but it was a completely new thing. And the way our band director was at the time, he was like, you get to try three instruments. If none of them work, you go to percussion. So, I was originally going to play trombone. That’s what I thought I wanted to play. I tried it, and he was like, you can’t play that. I was like, okay. So I went home that day, and I was telling my mom [Warren County Middle School Principal] about it and she had played clarinet in middle school. And so she went and got her clarinet out of the closet. She was like, try this and I picked it up. That was how it started.”
Rice showed quick progress and was soon asked to join the 7th/8th grade band. She began taking private lessons to hone her skills, which paid off big time in 8th grade Rice auditioned for Mid-State Band and was selected first chair bass clarinet and third chair B-flat clarinet.
“I was really surprised I had done that well because I had only had about a year and a half, well a year of private lessons. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew what I was doing. I wasn’t from a big town because places like Murfreesboro like Siegel [Middle School], they have 50 kids making Mid-State and All-State, and the Cookeville band, they have about 30.”
During her freshman year Rice became the first person in 15 years in Warren County to win her audition for the All-State Band. It’s a feat she accomplished every single year of high school.
Rice’s music compassion doesn’t end now that high school is over. She will be majoring in Music Performance at Western Kentucky University this fall and plans to attend ClarinetFest 2023 in Denver, Colorado.