oboeinsight

It’s all about editing, sound and music, folks.
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Magritte’s Apple will be hosting a Carnival of Music on February 13 and is, in fact, the new host of CoM.
What does this mean to me? Eh … just that I’ll check it out, of course. But if anyone wants some blogattention that’s one way to get it. I’ve never submitted anything. I’m waiting [...]

Well, this video shows that the oboe section could really use some work. What weak playing. Oh well. I wonder if they even bothered to practice at all.
Then again, perhaps you disagree? Do tell!
;-)

I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetryas I needed it

-John Cage
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Most of the hits at this site are due to fairly predictable searches. Some are looking for oboe auditions, some for oboe teachers, and some are searching on a double reed player’s name (I wonder how many of us searching on our own names?!). I rarely see searches that don’t make sense, although I sometimes [...]

jiggity jig!
(Don’t know the poem? Well, maybe I’ll rewrite it and give you my oboe player version in a moment.)
It’s good to be home. And safe. The roads weren’t too bad driving to Napa, but coming home was something else. The rain was the sort that doesn’t allow one to see very far … but [...]

… what it must be like to live with a condition called “amusia”. I know some folks can take or leave music (which is beyond me, but oh well), but to not be able to even care at all, to, in fact, be disturbed by music, is just sad. Read the article for more information.
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Today is oboe collection day. No … I’m not driving around town collecting oboes! I’m driving back to Napa to pick up the oboe that has been in the shop for three weeks. Mark said he thinks I’ll really like what he’s done with it and I can’t wait to see and play it! So [...]

Well, what can I say? I had a blast! Sometimes concerts just feel right, and this one did. (Granted, I only played the first and last works, and I couldn’t hear the others.) But I enjoyed the music, and loved what Cynthia Baehr and Eleanor Angel did with the Sinfonia Concertante. They were just great!
Of [...]

I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don’t understand.

-Sir Edward Appleton
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Well, maybe not really, but this ad is great! (It takes time and stopped on me a few times.)
Heard about it first here, via Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise.
Oh, and as Alex says, be sure and watch the rehearsal stuff too.
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At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed. One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he [...]

You know, if the sun was an oboe, what would you do?
Interviewer: Is that —
No, no. I was just making a funny little haiku. That was just a little joke. Well, it’s a half-joke. Because how would you hear it?
-Lou Reed (Velvet Underground) quote found here
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But then there was a rude interruption, as shocking as the sound of loud conversation during Figaro at Glyndebourne. “Staff call. Joanne Groomby, contact 128, Joannne Groomby.”
The oboe quartet was playing in pet foods, unnoticed by shopper Tony Middleton standing near packets of Trill. “I’m not a classical music fanatic, although I like the more [...]

Some Opera San Jose folks might recognize the name Nmon Ford, as he sang with the company for a short while. He just received a very nice review for a performance with the LA Phil. In fact, this review is the sort we dream of. Read this, for instance

Ford wasn’t just up to the challenge. [...]

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I’m seeing some poetry at some rather popular (I think) music sites. Poetry that I know isn’t in the public domain yet. So maybe I was wrong when I blogged about it being illegal to put poetry up at our sites. I wonder. Anyone out there know? I’m just curious because of course I’d post [...]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HERR MOZART!

… and now I’m off to a rehearsal. On the schedule: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K364 and Symphony No. 1, K16. WIth these folks.
Adio for now!
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Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement [...]

Pliable, over at On An Overgrown Path blogs about music blogging perks … and I’m jealous! I’ve not received any CDs in my mailbox. Sniffle sniffle.
This isn’t fair … is it? (And yeah, “Life isn’t fair” was something my poor kids heard me say a lot as they were growing up. But shoot … [...]

My dearest Papa!
I cannot write Poetically; I am not a Poet. I cannot arrange my words so artfully that they reflect shadow and light; I am not a painter. I cannot even express my feelings and thoughts through gestures and Pantomimes; I am not a dancer. But I can do it with the sounds of [...]

Two for the price of one. (Of course since no one is paying me anything I’m not sure what this means!)

Because of Mozart, it’s all over after age seven.

-Wendy Wasserstein, playwright (The Heidi Chronicles, The Sisters Rosensweig)
Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven ‘created’ his music, but the music of Mozart is of such [...]

“He wants every last click of a bassoon’s keys, each scrape of horsehair on catgut to be heard,”
There’s some lovely writing in this review of the Gardiner concert, but I’m trying to understand why the key clicks of a bassoon are desired.
I prefer not to hear the key clicking. I think most of us like [...]

Reading this from A Monk’s Musical Musings (Are you really a monk? I’m guessing not! But I’m so gullible I’ll believe you if you tell me you are. And, by the way, your “Favorite Books” scare me!):

Anyway, it’s now on its way back to me. What I find most irritating however, is that my $2,000.00, [...]