oboeinsight

I can get cheap Viagra, Xanax, Levitra, Prilosec, Valium and who knows what else. I can find “horny people in your area”. I can get a Rolex replica. I can get “overestimated contract funds” deposited into my account from Engineer Abdul Ahmed. I can get an amazing home loan (they say my application has already been approved and I haven’t even applied. Amazing!), and I can get all sorts of inexpensive software.

But there’s still one question that hasn’t been answered.

Can I get an oboe reed?

And this, my friends, is the Big Question. So stay tuned.
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I wish “Reed Day” meant that it was pouring reeds and I had to stay home because of that. But, woe is me (woe is I .. you choose), that is not what it means. So today I’ll go exercise (I’m really not sure how long I’ll last—being up past midnight really takes its toll on this old body—but I know I have to at least go and try. I’m hoping that will help me get moving and energize me for a day of reed work.

Of course I’m also hoping that, while I’m away from home, the reed elves will drop off a few reeds that are just my “size”.

I can dream, can’t I?

I was thinking about the curse of the oboe reed; what other instrumentalists deal with this curse? There’s bassoon, although I believe that the bigger the reed, the less the difficulty (it’s certainly that way with English horn). Clarinetists and saxophonists deal with the reed issue, although they don’t make their reeds from scratch. Are there any other instrumentalists who must work on their equipment? It’s often very frustrating because we reed folk can’t just pick up the instrument and work; we have to work on reeds first. Is that fair? No. No it’s not.

And is there any other profession where an individual has to work on equipment like we do? I’m not coming up with anything. We also have to cover all the costs of this lovely requirement. It’s not cheap.

Ah well. That’s life in the big city. I just felt like whining. It’s a great way to start the day, you know?

Of course I remind myself of what I tell students: Learn to play well on bad reeds. Everyone will have a bad reed now and then. So it’s just a given that one must play well on them.

Oh … and if you are a master reed maker and you want to be kind to a non-master reed maker, you can always send me reeds! I’ll even blog about them if they work for me. Big time. REALLY big time. PO Box 8655. San Jose. 95155-8655. Stick ‘em in a box. Send ‘em. It’s that easy. :-)

Surely there’s one or two reed elves out there? Ya think?

I’m just home from opera. It’s 11:30. Some of you might see that time and think, “Wow. That’s pretty late to be coming home from work.” (I know that a lot of you won’t, of course, if you are late night sorts.) But I’m probably the second one home from the orchestra; one other player lives closer to the hall, but the drive for me is usually under ten minutes.

The audience was quite enthusiastic, so that was great.

But me? Sigh. The lovely reed I’ve been enjoying died a sudden death tonight. And I mean sudden. There were notes. Then there were no notes. This usually means that there was a very small hairline crack and it finally went through. I had wondered if what I was hoping was just the grain was really a crack. It was one of those times I try to pretend I don’t really see it … denial is such a wonderful thing for at least a short time. So instead of the wonder reed I had to use a reed that works but is what I call a “spit catcher.” No, I don’t really spit into the reed! It’s just that the reed sounds like it has something in it. Even though it really doesn’t. That problem is a mystery to me. Fortunately I rarely get reeds like that, but I had to deal with it tonight and by the time we finished the opera I was beat.

I’ll bet you can’t guess what I’ll be working on tomorrow … right?! :-)

One orchestra colleague was complaining about getting no mention in the Merc review. I hadn’t even thought about that. I guess I don’t really expect the orchestra to get mentioned in opera reviews. But to her it was a big insult. Funny how we all take things differently. When I’ve played English horn solos in symphonic works and don’t get a mention my reaction is to assume the reviewer hated me. Ah, we are a sensitive bunch, aren’t we?!

And now it’s nearing midnight. I need to get up a little after 6:00 AM. I think I’d better call it a night!
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My reeds are very unhappy. This weather isn’t helping. I have opera tonight. Sigh.
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First of all, Brian Sacawa corrected his error of saying his earlier post, that I then commented on, was by a visual artist. It was not. It was by someone else. Since then there have been more comments at Drew’s site, and I realize that 1) I’ve been challenged 2) I offended several people 3) people who don’t know me read what I write differently than people who know me and 4) I need to be more careful about what I quote; my “pearls before folks” was (duh!) seen as “pearls before swine” and I don’t call people swine, nor do I think those who don’t care for classical music are pigs or “less-than-people” people . Really. But I liked the pearls part and I let my fingers run away with words sometimes. So I do apologize to the “real poster” of the comment. I wasn’t calling you a pig. Honest.

But the visual artist has challenged me now. And I’m not sure how to take that, as I’m never up for a challenge. (I’m not a very competitive person. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone into music since I’m not competitive, eh? I’ve always taken what I’ve been given, but I’ve never fought for more. Call me lazy (like a pig in mud?). Call me wimpy too, because I also shy away from confrontation. But since I guess this one is my fault—I got into this one and now I have to deal with it—I have to take it like an oboist. Or something.

Anyway, I clearly stepped on folks’ toes, for which I do apologize. Anyone who knows me I hate toe-stepping! But I have very large feet.

So here’s the challenge:

Let’s not let our preconceptions about visual artists hide a very real fact: visual artists experience a lot more classical music than classical musicians take time to experience visual art. I say that as someone who has listened to classical music my entire career as I worked, and whose many artist acquaintances do the same. I would challenge any oboeist, or any other musician to be able to do the visual equivalent of what I and another graduate student did one night, while working in the studio: whistling the last movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, in its entirety,
while alternating music phrases between us, in a playful exercise of sheer joy over the music and our communication. Maybe, we missed our calling!

She’s right; I don’t see enough art. I wish I could say she was wrong, but to get to a gallery just doesn’t happen enough for me. And I’m embarrassed by that. And I can’t look at art while I work … I can’t practice or perform and manage to do anything else at the same time. I know some colleagues who read while playing (even in performance!), or who watch TV while practicing. I can’t do it. When I was in my “wannabe poet” stage I couldn’t write while listening to music either; it was one or the other. Words took my full attention. Music took my full attention. (For the record, the house is silent right now.)

As to whistling? Nope. I can’t do that either. First of all, I can only whistle while inhaling (really!), but to whistle Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is simply an impossibility for me. I can’t even imagine doing that.

So I fail the challenge. And I apologize to the visual artist whom I clearly offended even while my blog was in response to comments she didn’t even write, nor did I name anyone at all. If you read this blog, dear artist, I am sorry for the offense!

If I hear from her and she wants her site listed here I’m fine with that—I’m all for promoting artists. But since I’m still not into naming names, I don’t feel comfortable providing the link at the moment.

To all of you: If you can whistle Beethoven please send me a recording. And if you want to disagree with me about anything that’s okay. I’m pretty darn wimpy. I’m insecure. But if I put something offensive up at this site I deserve to be called on it.

I still stand by my “classical music isn’t for everyone” thought, though. I think that one is okay … isn’t it? Does that stomp on toes? I would think those that don’t like it would nod their heads and say, “sure isn’t!” and those that like it would say, “Gee, maybe that makes me special.” (To the non-lovers that’s okay too … they can just smile innocently and say, “Sure, you’re very, very specciiiall,” in a very special and knowing way.

OH … and this doesn’t mean I don’t believe I shouldn’t introduce classical music to people. You never know who will fall for it! My mother brought a bunch of friends to see La Boheme. She didn’t know what they’d think. I kind of had them pegged. One that I’d decided was a definite “Never again!” sort went home and told her husband she loved it and would go again.

So you never know.

PS
Yeah, I do realize that the artist was suggesting I do the “visual equivalent” of whistling Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. I did get that. It’s just that I’m not sure what that might be, and I have to be honest and say I haven’t the talent to do even a smidgin’ of visual art. It’s a drag, to be honest. But there you go. I do put little eyeglasses on my music when I need to pay attention to the conductor. Does that count for anything?

I didn’t think so.

Sometimes I just wanna be a kid again. I watched this slide show, with music, of Curtis and I vaguely remember being young and playing in the orchestra and I remember the great joy (and tremendous nerves) of that time. Granted, I wasn’t at a music conservatory and my orchestral experience while in college was primarily with the San Jose Symphony (RIP) (I did play in the SJSU orchestra for a couple of years, but they wrote the BM requirements in such a way that I didn’t continue with school performing groups for the full four years).

I wonder about the music and pictures in the slide show, though; they are playing Stravinsky The Firebird but then they show a piano soloist (probably someone I’m supposed to recognize but don’t … yikes … shame on me!) taking a bow. Isn’t that sort of weird? I would have thought they’d have a piano concerto playing, considering the pictures. But what do I know?

And I’m also wishing we’d do The Firebird with Symphony Silicon Valley. Maybe someday? I’ll never forget my experience hearing it played at Flint Center at De Anza College, with Marc Lifschey on oboe. When he came in with the solo he filled every inch of the room with his amazing, beautiful, velvety, rich sound. I had never heard that sort of beauty before. He was quite the musician.

UPDATE:
I should have read the article that went with the slide show. Then I would have known the soloist was Gary Graffman and that the concert was in his honor. I also would have heard some more sound clips. (Now I have.)

May 2, 2006. Remember the date. Music From The Inside Out will be broadcast on a good number of PBS stations. Ours? Yep. At 11:00 PM. According to the information I see, it will be rebroadcast a number of times as well, but only on the KQED Encore station. Not a station we get. So you can bet I’ll be setting my recorder. If I don’t have concerts 11:00 is past my bed time.

If you need to find your local PBS station on line try this.
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Drew McManus, at Adaptistration, has been posting the TAFTO contributions for this year’s Take A Friend To Orchestra Month. I do hope you are reading them! Brian Sacawa’s offer brought a response that I found puzzling, frustrating, interesting and, finally, “meh” (to quote my daughter Kelsey).

Here’s the comment:

This is a very interesting post for me in that it prompts a concern that has been on my mind for a long time. I am closing in on age 50–definitely part of the TV Generation–and even though I enjoy performing classical music as a vocalist and chorus member, I can’t say that I thoroughly enjoy classical symphony concerts as an audience member. Unless I am very familiar with the work being performed, I experience what feels like long periods of detachment until something in the music really grabs me. Often, this means detachment through an entire movement of a symphony!
If it is like this for me, as a somewhat “educated” classical audience, I find it hard to imagine how it might be experienced by the average potential audience member that we’re trying to cultivate. It’s one thing to experience classical music as a background experience while other things are going on, such as at home, in the workplace, or in a bookstore. It’s another thing entirely to face an orchestra and listen attentively for 90 minutes or more. I can’t honestly say that I usually enjoy the classical concert experience as fully as a movie or highly engaging (lots of patter) pops concert.
If it feels like work for me, how can it be that enticing (i.e., generate repeat attendances) for most newbies?

So my first reaction was to sigh. Because I’m good at sighing. And then I thought, “Arrgh! Pops Concerts?! Those are such schlock for the most part.” (I do enjoy them sometimes, by the way; I’m a sucker for some kinds of pops music. Really.) I also wondered why someone would participate in something she doesn’t really care to attend. To me that’s just weird, but maybe there are people in our field who do it and yet don’t like it, just like there are those in other fields who do their job but don’t like it. Then I saw that the person who posted is a visual artist. And then I just sort of wanted to answer back, “Well, who needs visual art anyway?!” But that would only be to get back at someone out of frustration and anger, because I actually do love visual art. When my feelings get hurt I react foolishly. So I shouldn’t really go there, should I?

But now, well, I’m just thinking that she just doesn’t get it and isn’t that okay? Not everyone “gets” classical music. It doesn’t touch everyone the way it touches me. Not everyone is figuratively (and sometimes literally) down on the floor crying because of the wonder and beauty of a piece of music. Not everyone experiences the state of awe that music brings to me. And many around me. That’s okay … isn’t it? What I do … does it have to appeal to the masses? Do we really have to try and grab every soul out there and shove classical music down throats simply to try and get them to love what we love? It’s never gonna happen, anyway. I don’t think it has to happen. I do think we can try to get newbies to listen. We can introduce music just like someone introduced asparagus to me years ago. I didn’t think I liked it, even having never tried it, and I found it a most wonderful taste. And if classical music becomes their thing—their asparagus—wonderful! If not, well, they’ll be missing out on something that I could take a comfort bath in but that’s all right. I’ll survive. (I can, after all, keep taking those comfort baths. Other folks’ not liking what I love doesn’t deprive me of my passion.)

Maybe I’ve been thinking about this recently because I am not finding my experience at church to be musically fulfilling and I used to think I could play there and perhaps people would wake up to all that is wonderful about classical music. But now I’m thinking that isn’t necessarily going to happen. Not everyone at the church will love what I do. In fact for some it might even give them the pain in the stomach (really!) that some of the crud we have to sing and listen to gives to me. (Do any of you get that? That twisty ICKY feeling because you can’t stomach what you are hearing?) And I’m thinking, at this point, that I really just want to “be” and not try to introduce my music to that particular group of people. Sometimes the energy it takes to introduce my “thing” is exhausting, and it is risky (rejection of what I love often first feels like rejection of me, sad but true).

I should think on this some more, certainly. But I guess I’m at the point where I’m thinking casting what I and many of my colleagues see as pearls before the folks who see what I do as swill is simply futile. I wonder.
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“It doesn’t make sense to have an orchestra in a town of less than 5,000,” said Lora Lynn Snow, an oboist who co-founded the symphony in 1989. “But we do. It is happening.”

Read about the orchestra—and their generous benefactor—here. The eighty-nine year old not only donated money, but also heard the orchestra for the first time just last night.

Generosity like Ann Carson Dater’s makes my heart happy. And hearing about a small town with a symphony orchestra is really wonderful!

(Paragraph omitted. Rich person was idolized. Rich person has turned into real, extremely unkind person. So never mind.)

There is always the part of me that feels “less than” and sometimes simply jealous of those who have more. However I did choose this profession, and I love it. So I need to stifle the “what ifs” and the “life isn’t fair” (duh … I’ve been telling my kids that forever!) and even the “I can’t even have a real vacation” thing and appreciate what has been given to us as an orchestra (well, really orchestras since Symphony Silicon Valley and Opera San Jose are two separate orchestras with some overlapping members) and to me as an individual and stop my pouting. (Yes, I’ve been in pouting mode recently. It happens. I always recover.)

How many people get to sit with a group of musicians and perform masterworks for a (near) living? How many get to sit in the middle of an orchestra and be blanketed in the sound? It’s a blessing. It’s a treat. And I love it!

So hoorah for the patrons of the arts. And thank you. Thank God for those who have enough that they can generously help out arts organizations and other groups in need of financial help. We don’t send appreciation your way nearly enough. So I applaud you all now. (Can you hear me clapping?) :-)
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I’m home. Opening night is over and done with. Some “interesting” things went on. I don’t think I’ll go into it here, though.

Except to say we need monitors in the pit!

Oh … and also to say my husband noticed one of the stage musicians wearing contemporary glasses at the final dress. I guess they are allowed to wear their glasses (I asked). I think it’s odd. A colleague says I’m discriminating against him if I think that way.

Thoughts?
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