oboeinsight

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

-Arthur Conan Doyle
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In opera, embarrassment comes with the territory. Sooner or later, if you’re a fine and dignified singer, you will find yourself trapped onstage in a situation or a costume so stupid that the voice of God couldn’t save the scene. For René Pape, who has the body and bearing of a Hussar and who is [...]

Oboe is turning out to be a piece of cake.
-Eric Dannewitz (Found at a jazz sax message board. Go figure.)
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We had a double rehearsal day today for Symphony. I’m now totally exhausted. I didn’t play as well as I’d hoped. I need to spend more time with this music tomorrow before tomorrow night’s rehearsal. But I have to be careful, too, because I don’t want to tire my mouth (or reeds) out.
I know [...]

Unfortunately I didn’t hear anything.
But go here to see some very nice pictures of the opera I just finished playing.
(Wouldn’t it be grand if management thought that the orchestra would be more connected to the productions if we had monitors for both sight & sound? Yes. It would.)
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I played cards with [Richard] Strauss every day for ten years, and he was a pig!

-Hans Knappertsbusch, conductor (1888-1965)
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So I had my Monday coffee at Santa Cruz’s Coffeetopia. I’m not a big coffee drinker, but Monday morning has become my bit ‘o down time after the drive over the hill and prior to heading up the (much smaller) hill to teach at UCSC. Today I added a toasted bagel and cream cheese to [...]

“It was a lot of things together, the emotion, the stress,” she said, adding that the crowd’s booing made things worse.

I’m so glad I’m not the woman in this article.
This is how it goes: the minute I have a bad story … I can find someone who has a worse one! Life is like that!
Of [...]

EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand,
Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,
Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds
In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear, and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur ‘ Where is any certain tune
Or measured music in [...]

about my “blacking out experience”? Please don’t be! I’m healthy. Honest and true. I’m just healthy AND stupid sometimes! I forget to eat. Or I don’t eat well.
Yeah … I really do forget to eat. It’s not something I care much about sometimes. I have other things that call out to me. The computer. My [...]

The month of May has been deemed “Take a Friend to Orchestra” month.
Read about it.
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Practiced today? Made any reeds?
Or are you gonna have to deal with Patty the Knife? (Many, many thanks to my dear husband, Dan, who managed to get a picture of me that doesn’t make me want to cry!)

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April 23, 2005
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April 23, 2005
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On my way to opera today I thought it might be a good idea to get a cup of coffee because I was a bit tired.
First act was fine, aside from some man in the audience who sounded like he was dying of some horrendous disease. But the first act doesn’t worry me much. [...]

It seems as if we’ve been deserted. Sigh.
I know Terminal Degree had talked about removing the blog, but now it’s been done and, well, I miss it. The site was insightful and very honest.
Rats.
I know that some have talked about the safety of these blogs. TD had posted anonymously and was able to vent about [...]

Um. Yes. Hamster Opera. You read correctly.
I’m sorry to say that I don’t believe they found a seductive enough Carmen. I realize that many opera stars are a bit on the heavy side, and I let that one slide, but sometimes I just can’t fall for the story when Carmen looks far too cute, [...]

Just read it.
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Ilkka Talvi, of the Of Mice and Men blog, has a good write up on the audition process.
There are a whole lot of auditions coming up in OboeLand. You can check the US ones out on my current professional auditions page. It’s quite the audition fest.
But who will win?
Heh. Who knows?
I’ve [...]

One more performance of The Flying Dutchman (Sunday at 3:00) and our opera season will be over. (Why, oh why, can’t we have a summer season? Sigh.)
Next on the agenda is Beethoven and Strauss, so the end isn’t really in sight … yet.
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Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

-Beethoven
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The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not [...]

I have updated the current audition page. Check it out! I now have the repertoire lists for Tacoma, Cleveland and … drum roll please … New York Philharmonic! Many thanks to a reader (and reeder) who supplied me with some of this information. (I don’t know if you want to be named publicly … let [...]

… was a good day, practice-wise.
Some days things simply feel right. I like that.
I have no opera tonight, so after a bit of exercise, a short shopping excursion, a good practice, a student who did very well on her scales (!), and a nice dinner, it’s a relaxing evening at home with the [...]

Parsifal - the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20.
-David Randolph
(Another one from Divertimenti.)
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