AN INSTRUMENTAL MAN.

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 12-MAY-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Mark Stewart rarely leaves his apartment in Brooklyn without an instrument of his own design, usually a chaladoo. A chaladoo is a version of a chalumeau, a Baroque clarinet with finger holes instead of keys. The chaladoo has the profile of a bass clarinet, but it is made of plastic plumbing pipe and plastic plumbing fixtures, to which Stewart has attached the mouthpiece of a saxophone. Because he is often interrupted while playing the chaladoo by people who want to know what it is, he has drawn on one side of a four-by-seven-inch card a schematic diagram of the chaladoo and, on the other side, instructions for how to build one. He carries...

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