She Grew Up in Canada's Jazz Royalty - Then Fought to Put the Clarinet Back on the Bandstand
Jun 06, 2026
She Grew Up in Canada's Jazz Royalty - Then Fought to Put the Clarinet Back on the Bandstand
Virginia MacDonald on growing up with a jazz legend father, learning music by ear, and making the clarinet work in modern jazz.
Virginia MacDonald chose the clarinet at age six because she thought the keys looked like buttons.
She grew up in Toronto as the daughter of one of Canada's most celebrated jazz saxophonists, in a household where music was simply the air. Her mom was a visual artist. Her dad practiced six hours a day. Musicians like Neil Swainson and Pat Larbara were just the neighbors, as far as she knew.
By the time Virginia figured out that the modern jazz world had largely moved past the clarinet, she had already decided she was going to change that.
In this episode of the Clarinet Ninja Podcast, Jay sits down with Virginia at her home — along with her dog Olive — for a wide-ranging conversation about growing up surrounded by jazz royalty, learning music entirely by ear, and the long road to finding her own voice on an instrument the jazz world had mostly left behind. They also dig into her debut album as a bandleader, released on Cellar Music.
I Just Thought They Were Buttons
How Virginia MacDonald fell for the clarinet at age six and why she had to wait a year to start
Virginia's dad laid out the instruments in his studio like a Willy Wonka factory — saxophone, piano, flute, and more. She saw the clarinet and was immediately entranced. She thought the keys were buttons. She didn't care. That was the instrument.
Her fingers weren't quite big enough to cover the tone holes yet, so she waited another year. From that point on, there was never really a question about what she was going to do.
That's Just Pat. That's Just Neil.
Growing up with jazz legends as the family's regular houseguests and not knowing they were legends
Musicians like bassist Neil Swainson (who worked with Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw) and Pat Larbara, who later became one of Virginia's main mentors, were just her parents' friends. Regular people she'd known since she was three years old.
That kind of immersion shaped everything about how Virginia learned music - by ear, by feel, by osmosis. Not out of books. Not with a metronome. Just by being in the room.
Everything You're Doing Is Wrong
The first classical clarinet teacher, the barrage of criticism, and why Virginia didn't last long
When Virginia finally got a legitimate clarinet teacher at around 15 or 16, the experience was jarring. The message was immediate and total: your tone is wrong, your embouchure is wrong, your sound is wrong, your gear is wrong.
After eight or nine years of playing the instrument by ear, learning jazz standards over chord changes with her dad at the piano, developing her own musical instincts, being told everything was incorrect didn't land well. That relationship didn't last long.
What Virginia took from it, in hindsight, was something more generous: the teacher was teaching the way she knew how to teach. Virginia just wasn't wired for learning that way.
Who's Hiring Clarinet Players for a Jazz Quartet?
The uncomfortable realization that the modern jazz world had mostly moved past her instrument
At some point in her late teens and early twenties, Virginia did the math. She had Benny Goodman records. She had Buddy DeFranco. And while both were extraordinary, they felt aesthetically far removed from the music she was actually drawn to - Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins.
And when she looked around at the working jazz world, the picture was clear: front lines had saxophone and trumpet. Nobody was specifically looking for a clarinet player in a contemporary jazz group. It wasn't that they didn't want it. It was more like, well, that doesn't exist, does it?
Virginia was self-aware enough to see the problem. She chose to make it work anyway.
I Want to Sound Like That on Clarinet
Why she transcribed trumpet players instead of clarinet players - and what Kenny Dorham's fluidity on In and Out changed for her
Part of Virginia's path forward was a practical one: instead of transcribing clarinet players, she started transcribing trumpet players. The range sits beautifully on the clarinet. The vocabulary felt closer to the modern jazz she loved. And the phrasing - the way trumpet players bent notes, attacked them, let them fall away - gave her a new set of goals for what she wanted to do with her own sound.
The record that clicked things into place was In and Out, the 1964 Blue Note album with Joe Henderson and Kenny Dorham. Specifically Kenny Dorham. The seamlessness of his sound, the fluidity of his phrasing, the way he moved through a line - Virginia wanted that on clarinet. And figuring out how to get there, in her own way, on her instrument, became the work.
No One Can Say That's Wrong - It's My Music
On the freedom of improvising over your own compositions, and what trust means in a co-led project
Virginia's debut album as a bandleader features six original compositions alongside two duet performances of standards - Stardust with bassist Ira Coleman, and Duke Ellington Sound of Love (by Charles Mingus) with pianist Jeffrey Keezer.
In talking about the difference between improvising over her own music versus a standard, Virginia puts it simply: no one knows what it's supposed to sound like. There's no lineage to navigate, no 100 years of interpretations informing what you play. You are the lineage, from day one.
That same sense of creative freedom extends to her ongoing collaboration with bassist and composer Todd Marcus, where the trust runs both ways - each player given full agency to interpret the other's music in whatever way feels true.
Creating vs. Recreating
What Virginia and Todd Marcus are doing at Smalls that feels like jazz really is
Jay went to hear Virginia and Todd Marcus play at Smalls in New York about a year ago. What he walked away with was a feeling he kept coming back to: he felt like he heard them creating rather than recreating.
So much of the classical world - and even parts of the jazz world - is about recreation. Honoring what already exists. Virginia and Todd's work together is something different. Rooted in tradition, but not beholden to it. New music, made in real time, by two people who deeply trust each other.
Meet the Frankenstein
Two serial numbers, one R13, and the crystal mouthpiece she hated for exactly two weeks
Virginia's clarinet is an R13 with two different serial numbers - top joint and bottom joint from different instruments, both from the 1990s. She bought it for around $1,200 at a vintage shop in Toronto when she was 18 or 19. She calls it the Frankenstein. She loves it.
The mouthpiece story is equally good. Someone gifted her a Pomarico crystal mouthpiece in her early-to-mid 20s. She played two notes and put it down immediately - too resistant, too alien, nothing like what she was used to. Two weeks later, after giving it another chance with a softer reed, she was never going back. That mouthpiece eventually broke (crystal has its risks), and she's been playing a Raia Aura mouthpiece since 2020, with a #2 reed.
Practice Is Precious Now
On touring, admin, booking flights, and what it means to finally sit down with your instrument
Virginia doesn't have a regular practice routine right now. Touring, gig prep, and the full administrative load of running her own career - booking flights, managing logistics, sending emails - leave little room for the kind of focused practice she did earlier in her life, when five, six, seven hour days were normal.
But she's always playing. And she finds that being in the music constantly, even without structured practice, keeps the fluidity there. When she does get time to sit down with the clarinet, it feels more precious for it. More intentional. More present.
Her approach to practicing repertoire is methodical in its own way: take the first chord of a piece, think through everything she might play over it, work through those ideas, then move to the next chord. Specific, but grounded in real musical context - not scales in a book for their own sake.
Listen to the Episode
You can find Virginia MacDonald at virginiamacdonald.ca. Her debut album is out now on Cellar Music and available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and all major streaming platforms.
If you are an adult clarinet player looking to get serious about your playing, the Clarinet Ninja Dojo is the place to start. And you can book a free session with Jay at Calendly