Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tale Ognenovski was born April 27, 1922 in Brusnik, Bitola, Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He inherited his talent from his reed pipe great-grandfather Ognen and grandfather Risto and his father Jovan who played bagpipes. When he was seven he began playing on the reed pipe. With his father passing away in 1937 and when he was fifteen his grandmother gave him some money to buy his first clarinet.

During WWII he served as a Macedonian Partisan, Tale began playing clarinet at celebrations and concerts in villages and the town of Bitola with numerous musicians. For three years beginning in 1951 he worked as a member of the Police Wind Orchestra and from 1954 till 1956 he worked with the Public Town Skopje Orchestra.

1956 saw him performing to a capacity audienceat Carnegie Hall in New York City as a clarinet and reed pipe/recorder soloist of the Macedonian State Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs. A seven year residency starting in 1960 had Ognenovski working with Radio Television Skopje. He went on to play in orchestras and ensembles that toured North America, and Europe.

HIs recordings were not singularly jazz, but included the works of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Tale also recorded classical and folk dances, often interlinking the three genres. Alongside his son Stevan, they arranged for two clarinets the music of Mozart. He was the recipient of twenty-one prestigious awards, had several articles and was recognized as one of the top 100 clarinetists of all time.

Clarinetist Tale Ognenovski, who authored a book on Macedonia dance and was biographed by his son Stevan, died in Skopje, Macedonia on June 19, 2012.

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